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Smart Quotes Converter: Curly and Straight Quotes

This free tool converts straight quotes (" and ') into smart curly quotes (“ ” ‘ ’), or turns curly quotes from Word and web pages back into plain straight quotes. It also fixes apostrophes.

By Debmedia Technologies LLP · Kolkata, India · Updated

What Is It and When Do You Need It?

Curly quotes look better in print, but straight quotes are safer in code. Text copied between Word, web pages and code editors often arrives with the wrong kind.

Paste the text, choose a direction and copy the result.

How to Use This Tool

  1. Enter or paste your input in the box or boxes above.
  2. Choose the options, if there are any.
  3. Press the button to run the tool.
  4. Read the result and use the copy button where one is shown.

How the Calculation Works

To make quotes smart, the tool looks at the character before each quote. If it is the start of the text, a space or an opening bracket or dash, the quote opens. Otherwise it closes. A single quote between two letters is an apostrophe and becomes ’. To make quotes straight, every curly or angled quote is mapped to the plain " or ' character.

Worked Example

"It's done," she said. becomes “It’s done,” she said. in smart mode.

Common Uses

  • Cleaning text before pasting it into code.
  • Preparing text for print or e-books.
  • Fixing quotes in CSV and JSON.
  • Editing blog posts.

Tips and Common Mistakes

  • Check the result if your text mixes several languages, because some use « » or „ “.
  • Quotes inside code blocks should stay straight.
  • Leading apostrophes in words like 'tis may need a manual fix.
  • Check the first result against a case you already know, so you can trust the tool for the rest.
  • Nothing you type leaves your device. The work is done by your browser, so it also works with a slow connection once the page has loaded.

Next, you may need the dash and hyphen normalizer, invisible character remover, character counter, text repeater.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, stored or sent to any outside service.

Frequently Asked Questions

Curly quotation marks that lean in the correct direction: “opening” and “closing”. Word processors add them automatically.
Code, JSON, CSV, HTML attributes and many forms break when they meet curly quotes. Straight quotes are safe there.
A quote after a space, a bracket, a dash or the start of the text opens. Any other quote closes. An apostrophe inside a word becomes ’.
No. Only quotes and apostrophes are changed.

Disclaimer: results are calculated in your browser from the numbers you enter. Check important results before you rely on them for money, health, safety or legal decisions.