The “ Symbol: Left Double Quotation Mark Explained

The “ symbol, officially known as the Left Double Quotation Mark, is a punctuation mark used to indicate the beginning of a direct quote, dialogue, or a title in typography. Often referred to as a "smart quote" or "curly quote," it resembles two tiny, filled commas or the number 66 raised above the text baseline. This character signals to the reader that exactly reproduced spoken or written words are about to follow.

Before the invention of the typewriter, printers and writers used directional, curved quotation marks to clearly distinguish the opening and closing of a quote. When typewriters hit the mainstream in the late 19th century, engineers replaced these elegant curves with a single, straight quotation mark (") to save precious keyboard space. With the rise of digital word processing, software began automatically converting straight quotes back into the more polished “ and ” symbols, giving birth to the term "smart quotes."

In the Unicode standard, the Left Double Quotation Mark is assigned the code point U+201C and lives in the General Punctuation block. This specific placement highlights its fundamental role as a universal text formatting character.

You will spot the “ symbol constantly in everyday writing, from published novels to casual text messages. In typography and journalism, it is the absolute standard for introducing dialogue or citing a source. On social media, users often rely on it to add a touch of sarcasm, highlight a specific phrase, or mock a popular saying. However, if you write code, beware of the “ symbol. Most programming languages strictly require the straight quotation mark (") to define strings. Pasting a smart quote into a code editor will almost certainly trigger a frustrating syntax error.

Inserting the Left Double Quotation Mark manually is easy once you know the shortcuts. On a Mac, simply press Option + [ (left bracket). On a Windows PC, hold down the Alt key and type 0147 on the numeric keypad. If you are building a website, you can use the HTML entity “ to ensure the symbol renders perfectly across all browsers. Most modern smartphone keyboards automatically insert a smart quote when you hold down the standard quotation mark key.

The “ symbol rarely travels alone. It naturally pairs with the ” (Right Double Quotation Mark), which closes the quote and looks like a tiny number 99. Other related symbols include the straight double quote ("), which lacks any curvature, and the « (Left-Pointing Double Angle Quotation Mark), which serves a similar quoting function in languages like French, Spanish, and Russian.