Smart quotes are a skeuomorphism

And they’re one that I’m not particularly fond of.

If they weren’t separate characters, if they just DISPLAYED as smart quotes but were treated under the hood as straight quotes, that would be fine! But I’m tired of copying and pasting some text and finding that it has these useless characters in it. If I copy a quotation, I have to edit all the quotation marks or apostrophes so they’re not visually mismatched with the straight quotes I’m using in the rest of the document. And never mind all the examples of code you can find online where the quote marks are thoughtlessly converted into “smart quotes” by whatever word processor or web publisher the author used.

A “skeuomorph” is when the design of something deliberately mimics an older element that’s no longer needed or in use. So like the faux wood paneling on newer cars, or save buttons in modern programs being shaped like floppy disks, or the whole concept of electric candles, or Winamp skins that look like jukeboxes. And skeuomorphisms can be cool! My desktop background doesn’t HAVE to be a faux wood grain like a real desk would have, but maybe I think that looks nice.

But smart quotes go a step further by forcing their presence on people who DON’T want or need to imitate the slanted appearance of handwritten quotation marks.

And the only argument I’ve ever seen in favor of them is “they look better”, which is totally subjective.

Smart quotes aren’t a skeuomorphism?

Since then, I’ve learned that some screen-readers don’t read straight quotes correctly, and might interpret them as meaning feet/inches/minutes/whatever. I mean this is clearly a problem with the software, but at the same time I don’t feel right subjecting screen-reader users to inaccurate interpretations of what I’m trying to say.

Is this a problem for any screen-reader users here in Geminispace? What do you think?

My final take on smart quotes (for now)

A couple of response posts that have helped guide me:

Re: Smart quotes are a skeuomorphism (idiomdrottning)

Straight quotes are a skeuomorphism (by Adou)

So, yeah, I guess I’m on the smart quote train. I still don’t really like the way they look, but I guess I’ll get used to it. My own personal feelings about not liking the way they look/how cumbersome it can be to type them if I’m not using a word processor (I hate word processors) pale in comparison to the needs of the reader.

I’d also completely forgotten about Ctrl+Shift+U for inserting special characters! So for Future November’s almost-certainly-needed reference when he forgets how to do this again: Type Ctrl+Shift+U and then insert the hex code of the character you’re trying to type.

‘ | 2018

’ | 2019

“ | 201c

” | 201d

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to spend the rest of my day typing random hex codes to see what comes up.