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Replace Straight with Smart Quotes

Convert prose quotation marks with six modes, Unicode letter-aware apostrophes and explicit heuristic, spacing and parser limitations.

Built by Saurabh Kumar

Quick Answer

Convert straight, curly or guillemet marks in plain prose. Apostrophes Only checks Unicode letter/mark neighbors. French Guillemets handles pairs within physical lines and adds narrow no-break spaces. Direction remains a heuristic; this is not code, HTML or CSV repair.

Mode

Plain prose only. Direction is a heuristic; inspect unmatched and nested quotes. Apostrophes Only targets marks between letters. French pairs stay within physical lines. Limits: 1,000,000 UTF-16 units / 20,000 lines.

0 input quote marks; 0 changed marks.

If Copy fails, select output and copy manually. There is no nonempty text to export when the result is empty.

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What Is the Smart Quotes Converter?

Convert quotation marks in plain prose with six modes. Curly quote direction is a heuristic suggestion to review, not parser repair or a guarantee of publishing correctness. Keep code, HTML attributes and structured records out of this workflow.

How to Convert Quotes

  1. Paste a prose draft and keep the source.
  2. Select a mode for both quote types, one type, apostrophes or paired guillemets.
  3. Review opening and closing marks, apostrophes and unmatched quotes.
  4. Copy or Download TXT. Counts show input marks and changed original marks separately.

How Quote Conversion Works

Smart modes inspect neighboring original code points: a quote at a start, after whitespace or an opening bracket usually opens; other contexts close. Apostrophes between Unicode letters or marks close, including consecutive contractions. A small English leading-elision list covers tis, twas, em and cause. It does not understand every language, possessive, omitted year or nested quotation.

Apostrophes Only changes straight apostrophes strictly between letters or marks; it leaves dialogue quotes and trailing possessive marks unchanged. Smart to Straight converts double marks U+201C, U+201D, U+201E, U+201F, U+00AB and U+00BB to U+0022, and single marks U+2018 through U+201B to U+0027. It keeps any existing spacing.

French Guillemets wraps nonoverlapping straight double-quote pairs on each physical line with U+00AB/U+00BB and one new narrow no-break space U+202F inside each boundary. Existing inner spaces stay. Cross-line and unmatched pairs stay; no nesting parser runs. CRLF/LF/CR endings stay. Input allows 1,000,000 UTF-16 units and 20,000 lines. Typography and spacing conventions vary by language and style guide.

Example: Select the Quote Task

Actual modes and changed-mark counts
Mode / inputOutputChanged marks
Apostrophes Only: l'été a'b'cl’été a’b’c3
Straight to Smart: ""“”2
French Guillemets: "hi"« hi »2

When to Convert Prose Quotes

Draft directional quotes before editorial review.

Convert only apostrophes inside words without changing double quotations.

Compare a plain-text guillemet draft against your publication’s style guide.

Common Mistakes

Changing punctuation globally can turn valid quoted string content into unescaped delimiters. Curly characters may be valid data in code, CSV or a document. Straight conversion keeps guillemet spacing, so it is not a reversible French transformation. Input-mark counts do not prove balanced pairs; unmatched and nested quotes need manual review. Measurements in feet or inches are not automatically distinguished from quotation marks.

Tips for an Editorial Review

Use Single or Double Only to limit scope, then check dialogue and elisions line by line. Choose Find and Replace for a known literal correction. The Unicode punctuation guidance describes distinctions between quotation marks, apostrophes and primes, and regional variation.