Smart Quotes Converter
Paste text and press Convert to turn straight quotation marks into curly ones, or curly ones back to straight for code and plain text. Apostrophes can be converted in the same pass, with an optional fix for double hyphens and three dots. You see how many conversions were made. Free, no sign-up, and nothing is uploaded.
Direction
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How to Use the Smart Quotes Converter
- Choose the direction. Straight → smart (curly) is the default. Smart → straight goes the other way.
- Tick the extras you want. Apostrophes is on by default. Double hyphen to em dash and Three dots to ellipsis are off. In the smart → straight direction the same boxes turn em dashes and ellipses back into -- and ....
- Paste your text and press Convert. The output does not update as you type, so press the button again after changing an option. The count shows how many marks were changed.
- Copy the result. Check the cases in the section below before you submit it.
The Characters Involved
| Mark | Character | Unicode | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| Straight double | " | U+0022 | Quotation mark |
| Straight single / apostrophe | ' | U+0027 | Apostrophe |
| Curly double, opening | “ | U+201C | Left double quotation mark |
| Curly double, closing | ” | U+201D | Right double quotation mark |
| Curly single, opening | ‘ | U+2018 | Left single quotation mark |
| Curly single, closing and apostrophe | ’ | U+2019 | Right single quotation mark |
| Em dash | — | U+2014 | Em dash |
| Ellipsis | … | U+2026 | Horizontal ellipsis |
An apostrophe is the same character as a closing single quote, U+2019. The Unicode Standard names it as the preferred apostrophe, which is why "don't" should become "don’t" and not "don‘t". Smart → straight also accepts the low-positioned quotes „ and ‚ that German and some other languages use to open a quotation, and turns them straight.
With the default settings, the sentence She said, "It's the best result we've seen." becomes She said, “It’s the best result we’ve seen.” and the tool reports 4 conversions: two double quotes and two apostrophes.
How It Decides Which Way a Quote Faces
A straight quote is treated as opening when it is the first character of the text or comes right after a space, a line break, an opening bracket or brace, a dash, or another opening quote. Otherwise it is closing. A straight single quote right after a letter or digit is an apostrophe and becomes ’. A single quote that opens a short list of words with dropped letters ('tis, 'twas, 'em, 'cause) or a two-digit year ('90s) is an apostrophe and becomes ’ as well, and feet-and-inches such as 5'10" become the prime marks 5′10″. That is the rule word processors use, and it is right for ordinary prose.
Where It Gets It Wrong
| You type | Tool gives | Correct |
|---|---|---|
'Nuff said (a dropped-letter word the tool does not know) | ‘Nuff said | ’Nuff said: only 'tis, 'twas, 'twere, 'twill, 'twould, 'em, 'cause, 'til, 'bout, 'cos and two-digit years such as '90s are recognised, so fix any other by hand |
6' 2" and a 12" ruler | 6′ 2″ and a 12” ruler | Primes are only used for feet followed by inches; a lone measurement such as 12" is read as a closing quote |
'hello' with Apostrophes unticked | ‘hello' | ‘hello’: the closing quote follows a letter, so the tool takes it for an apostrophe and leaves it straight |
“It’s ‘fine’” to straight with Apostrophes unticked | "It’s ‘fine’" | All single quotes stay curly, because that box governs every single quote |
Two more limits. The tool changes the shape of marks, never their nesting: it will not turn American double-outside style into British single-outside style, and it does not write guillemets (« ») or the corner brackets used in Japanese and Chinese. Search your text for the cases in the table before you hand it in.
When to Use Which Direction
- Straight → smart for essays and manuscripts that were drafted in a code editor, LaTeX or Markdown source, a chat app or an old web page. Mixed straight and curly marks in one document look unedited, and a publisher's typesetter will replace them anyway.
- Smart → straight for anything a computer reads. Word and Google Docs insert curly quotes automatically, and a curly quote in source code is usually a syntax error such as Python's "invalid character '“' (U+201C)". The same goes for JSON, YAML, CSV fields and shell commands, and curly quotes also break exact-match searches.
Which Tool Do You Need?
| If you want… | Use |
|---|---|
| Quote shapes, apostrophes, dashes and ellipses changed | This Smart Quotes Converter |
| A long quotation set as an indented block | Block Quote Formatter |
| Punctuation removed altogether | Remove Punctuation |
| Invisible and look-alike characters found | Hidden Character Detector |
| Quotes put around every line | Add Prefix & Suffix |
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the difference between straight and smart quotes?
- Straight quotes (" and ') are the single marks on a keyboard, used for both opening and closing. Smart quotes, also called curly or typographic quotes, are separate characters: “ and ‘ to open, ” and ’ to close. Word processors insert them automatically; plain-text editors and code do not.
- How does the tool know whether a quote is opening or closing?
- It looks at the character before. After the start of the text, a space, a line break, an opening bracket or a dash, a quote is opening; anywhere else it is closing. A single quote after a letter or digit is an apostrophe. This follows what word processors do, with exceptions for dropped-letter apostrophes ('tis, '90s) and for feet-and-inches. Other unusual cases need checking by hand.
- Why do curly quotes break code?
- Programming languages, JSON and shell commands accept only the straight characters U+0022 and U+0027 as string delimiters. A curly quote is a different character, so the parser reports an invalid character or an unterminated string. Convert smart → straight before pasting text from a document into code.
- Which apostrophe is correct, ' or ’?
- In typeset text it is ’ (U+2019), the same shape as the closing single quote, and the Unicode Standard names it as the preferred apostrophe. Keep the straight ' in code, URLs and file names.
- What do the em dash and ellipsis options do?
- Straight → smart turns a double hyphen (--) into an em dash (—) and three full stops (...) into a single ellipsis character (…). Smart → straight reverses both. They are separate from the quote conversion, so tick them only if you want them.
- Is my text uploaded or stored?
- No. The conversion runs in your browser and nothing is sent to a server. Closing the tab clears the text.