Quotation Marks Wrong? | Straight vs Curly Quotes Fix
Three different faults all look like “wrong quotes”. Type the keys in Notepad first — that single test tells you which of the three you have.
The 10-second test
Type and ' in Notepad. If they're also wrong there, it's the layout (cause 1). If Notepad is fine but Word “fixes” them into , it's smart quotes (cause 2). If the key seems dead until pressed twice, it's a dead key (cause 3).
Cause 1: @ and " swapped (layout)
UK vs US layouts swap Shift+2 and Shift+'. Same root fault as the @ key problem — same Win+Space fix, same permanent removal. Fix it there.
Cause 2: smart (curly) quotes
Want straight quotes in Word? File → Options → Proofing → AutoCorrect Options → AutoFormat As You Type → uncheck “Straight quotes with smart quotes”. Existing curlies: Find/Replace “ ” with ". Read our in-depth curly vs straight quotes guide.
Want curly quotes? In prose and Docs they're professional typography — but never in code, JSON, or HTML attributes, where a curly quote is a syntax error. When pasting from Word into CMS platforms or editors, see our Word-to-website encoding fix.
Cause 3: US-International dead keys
US-International turns " ' ` ~ into accent prefixes: "+a makes ä, so a lone quote needs a trailing space. Great for multilingual typing, maddening for code. Switch to plain US in language settings if you code more than you accent.
Questions
Why do my quotation marks look different (" vs “)?
Straight quotes (") come from the keyboard; curly quotes (“ ”) come from Word/Docs auto-formatting. Both are correct in different contexts — the fix depends on which one you want.
Why do I have to press the quote key twice?
You're on the US-International layout, where " is a dead key waiting for a vowel (ä). Press space after it for a plain quote, or switch to plain US.
Last verified Sep 2026 · Windows 11 24H2, macOS 15.1 · How we test