Smart quotes
Smart quotes. Runs entirely on your device, nothing is uploaded.
Smart quotes converts straight quotes to curly ones, or back to straight, chosen by mode. By default it also folds double hyphens into an em dash, spaced hyphens into an en dash, and three dots into an ellipsis character. Opening curly quotes are guessed only from the character right before the mark, so an unusual construction can come out backwards.
Questions
What decides whether a quote becomes an opening or closing curly quote?
The single character right before it. If a straight quote is preceded by the start of the text, whitespace, or an opening bracket or dash, it becomes an opening curly quote; otherwise it becomes a closing one. There is no lookahead, so an unusual construction can pick the wrong side.
What do the dashes and ellipsis options do?
With dashes on, the default, a double hyphen becomes an em dash and a hyphen surrounded by single spaces becomes an en dash. With ellipsis on, also the default, three literal dots become one ellipsis character. Both can be turned off independently of the quote conversion.
How does converting back to straight quotes work?
Set mode to straight and every curly quote, both single and double, is mapped back to its plain ASCII equivalent; with dashes and ellipsis on, em and en dashes convert back to a hyphen and the ellipsis character back to three dots.
Can it damage code or already-correct typography?
Yes, potentially. It has no awareness of code blocks or already-curly text; running it on source code containing straight quotes as string delimiters would still convert them, since the tool works on plain text with no syntax awareness.
Does the mode also affect the dash and ellipsis conversions?
Yes. Straight mode reverses all three conversions together: curly quotes, em and en dashes, and the ellipsis character, using the same dashes and ellipsis switches to decide which of those extra conversions to include.