To Smart Quote or Not?

Is there a unsaid standard to use either one?

[mattx17]

I have a client that is making text edits to their web site (by printing it out and marking it up). They are wanting to convert all quotes (double and single) to their smart quote equivalant.

My question is, is using smart quotes a standard thing to use on web sites? Or is it more standard to use plain old quotes?

[2by4]

It doesn't matter. I'm assuming you're talking about converting " to it's html character code, &#8216 or whatever it is.

[rjohara]

Smart quotes (printers quotes) will always look more professional, especially at larger font sizes. You have to be careful with internal apostrophes in important terms, however, since search engines will not always recognize them as semantically equivalent to typewriter tick-marks (straight quotes). For this reason I always use straight quotes in the <title> of a page and in the meta data, but smart quotes in the body of the page.

[mattx17]

Thanks for the help guys, I think I'll go ahead and use them in the body of the document to make the client happy.