To Quote or Not To Quote…that is the Struggle

To the average person’s eye quotation marks all look the same, however there are actually two distinct styles of quotation marks: straight and curly (also known as “smart”). The difference is simple, but easily missed.

So what’s the Difference?

Straight quotation marks are single or double vertical lines that frame a word or phrase.

'Straight' or "Straight"

Whereas curly quotation marks are single or double curved lines that change direction depending on if they are framing the beginning or end of the word or phrase. 

‘Curly’ or “Curly”

Visually both of these types of quotation marks function the same way, they signify the beginning and end of a quotation, passage, or phrase. But many publishers prefer curly (also referred to as smart) quotations as they are more pronounced to differentiate the start and end of a passage of text. 

Today, most word processors (i.e. Microsoft Word), automatically change straight quotations to smart quotations as you type. While this automatic feature is meant to make text more legible and in line with publishing standards, when it comes to conducting searches in databases it came make things complicated.

This is especially the case if you are copying and pasting a search strategy from Microsoft Word (or other word processing software), directly into a database. If quotations are automatically changed to curly quotes, it can cause issues with search strategies.

How Literature Databases View Curly (Smart) Quotations

Scholarly databases respond to these curly quotations in one of three ways.

• The search results are identical whether straight or curly quotations were used
• The search results varied depending on whether straight or curly quotations were used
• The search strategy is rejected (error message) due to unsupported characters

This issue can greatly impact searching biomedical literature since curly (smart) quotes are unsupported on the Ovid platform.

Ovid hosts the following biomedical databases:

• MEDLINE
• PsycINFO
• AMED
• JBI
• Embase (for some institutions, not MSK)

IMPORTANT: If curly quotes are put into an Ovid database an error message will be returned.

For more information about literature database platforms and how the respond to quotations:

Phrasing in Reproducible Search Methodology: The Consequences of Straight and Curly Quotation Marks

Barrick, K., & Riegelman, A. 2021. College & Research Libraries, 82(7): 978 

 

How to Disable Smart Quotes in Microsoft Word

For: Word 365, Word 2021, Word 2019, and Word 2016