should we use the special character for double quote in text?

[zollerwagner]

I've noticed that pages with a plain " validate as strict XHTML.

I'm wondering, though if I should be using

"

instead.

The w3.org site [w3.org] says only:

Some authors use the character entity reference

"""

to encode instances of the double quote mark (") since that character may be used to delimit attribute values.

So it looks like it's totally optional, unlike the replacements for <, >, and &.

Any thoughts?

[DrDoc]

Sometimes it's optional, such as in plain text. But if the " needs to be part of an attribute, then it should be replaced with the character entity.

[zollerwagner]

Sounds good. Thanks, DrDoc.