What Are Smart Quotes?
To help you produce documents that look great and behave as expected in other uses, Microsoft loaded Word with smart quotes. This feature automatically changes straight quotation marks to typographer’s quotes as you type. The curly smart quotation marks curl toward the text they precede and away from the text they follow. While this feature makes for a nice printed document and attractive headlines, it can be troublesome if your work is going to be used electronically, where straight quotation marks are preferred—particularly with computer-code listings.
How to Toggle Smart Quotes On and Off
Decide which type of quotation marks you want in your document before you begin. Toggle smart quotes on or off to control the appearance of all quotations marks that are entered into the document after the change is made.
How to Change the Existing Quotation Mark Style
If you’ve done a considerable amount of work on your document and you want to change the quotation style in the existing portion of the document, use Find and Replace. This process works for both single and double quotes, although you need to do separate replace operations, selecting the appropriate options for each. Microsoft Word uses your preference for current and future documents until you make a change in the AutoCorrect section.
