Smart Quotes Converter
Convert straight quotes to typographic “curly” quotes in English, German, French, Russian and other styles, or turn smart quotes back into straight ones.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your data is never uploaded.
What is Smart Quotes Converter?
Replaces straight typewriter quotes (" and ') with the correct typographic quotation marks for a language, and turns apostrophes into ’. It also works in reverse, converting curly quotes, guillemets and Japanese brackets back to plain ASCII quotes for code and data.
How to use Smart Quotes Converter
- Paste the text into the Input box.
- Choose Conversion: straight → typographic, or typographic → straight.
- For typographic quotes, pick a Quote style (English, German, French, Russian, Polish, Swedish or Japanese).
- Copy the converted text.
Example
She said "it's fine" and 'ok'.
She said “it’s fine” and ‘ok’.
English style
When to use Smart Quotes Converter
Use straight → curly when preparing text for print, e-books or polished web copy. Use curly → straight before pasting text into code, JSON, CSV or command lines, where curly quotes cause syntax errors. Ambiguous cases, such as a quote directly after punctuation, can need a manual check.
How Smart Quotes Converter works
A quote is treated as opening when it is at the start of the text or follows whitespace, an opening bracket or a dash; otherwise it is closing. A single quote between two letters or digits (don't, l'eau) becomes the apostrophe ’, as does a quote before a two-digit decade ('90s → ’90s). The chosen style supplies the characters, e.g. English “…” ‘…’, German „…“ ‚…‘, French « … » with non-breaking spaces, Russian «…» „…“. The reverse direction maps all of these (and ‟ ‛ ′ 「」『』) back to " and '.
Common Use Cases
- Typesetting quotes correctly in articles and books
- Fixing code that broke because a word processor inserted curly quotes
- Converting English quotes to German or French style for translations
- Cleaning JSON or CSV pasted from documents
FAQs
Why do curly quotes break my code?
Programming languages and JSON only accept straight ASCII quotes. “ ” and ‘ ’ are different characters and cause syntax errors.
Does the French style add spaces?
Yes. French typography puts a non-breaking space inside « and », and the tool inserts U+00A0 there.
How are apostrophes handled?
A single quote between letters (it's, l'été) or before a decade ('90s) becomes the typographic apostrophe ’ in every style.