Curled quotation marks don’t look curled.
- Left double quote:
“
: “ (looks identical to an uncurled quotation mark:"
: "). - Right double quote:
”
: ” (ditto). - Left single quote:
‘
: ‘ (looks like a backtick or grave accent:`
: `). - Right single quote:
’
: ’ (looks like an uncurled apostrophe:'
: ').
Of these, the left single quote is the worst offender. If it too looked like an uncurled apostrophe, we would simply have less than ideal typography. But since it looks like a backtick, it’s horribly ugly and actually hard to read.
This is new. I often use curled quotation marks, and I’ve never noticed this before. Something has changed.