I’m the pedantic side of a regular contributor, trying to find a good compromise style for quotes. I’m editing random pages to gauge reactions (mostly positive, so far – it seems to be only ‘computer people’ who think straight quotes are acceptable.
I shall put together a proposed guideline in due course, but for the moment, a good mid-Atlantic English style might be:
- Use double quotes for a direct, attributed, quotation: “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”, said Winston. In the Wiki source, these would be straight double-quotes and converted to readable ones on display
- Use single quotes for calling out phrases (Fowler’s ‘decorative quotation’), or for a nested quotation. In the Wiki source, these can be straight single quotes (ASCII apostrophes), rendered on display.
- Apostrophes should also be rendered by Wiki on display, except for leading ones, for which Wiki probably should provide an editing notation.
To illustrate the last point, using straight quotes, the following is hard to read (and almost ambiguous):
- in '96, the editors' excuse was just as feeble
and needs to be displayed as:
- in ’96, the editors’ excuse was just as feeble
where Wiki could automate the right-hand one but not the left. A possible editing shorthand for this might be:
- in &a;96, the editors' excuse was just as feeble