Straight and curly quote marks and apostrophes

Your consistency checks should take in whether apostrophes and quote marks are straight ('like this', and here's a straight apostrophe), or curly (‘like this’, and here’s a curly apostrophe). Many publishers will prefer curly quotes, and as a bare minimum you can specify ‘curly quotes throughout’ in your typesetter’s instructions, which would prompt a find and replace at typesetting stage.

However, it’s helpful to everyone if you can ensure this consistency yourself. You can achieve it with pasting a straight quote mark into Word’s ‘Find’ command – this would find all quote marks and apostrophes for you to quickly review for straightness or curliness. If you pasted an opening curly quote mark into ‘Find’ you would only get the opening curly ones, not straight marks, closing curly marks or apostrophes, so pasting a straight mark is best.

Remember, straight quote marks and apostrophes can indicate a copy and paste from the internet, so if you’re looking for plagiarism, finding straight quotes can be part of your detective work.