How do I disable "smart quotes", i.e. automatically substituting "these" with “these” ?

Joni September 23, 2020

I wrote something like:

curl -XPUT 'http://localhost:9200/idx/_settings'

and Confluence automatically changed it to:

curl -XPUT ‘http://localhost:9200/idx/_settings’

which completely breaks the curl command.

I would like to disable those smart quote substitutions. We're not using Confluence for typographic sugar, but for documenting programming code which in many cases make big difference with the little characters.

And no, having to *first* mark the code as Code (ctrl+shift+m) and only then starting to write/pasting code is an unwanted hindrance in the workflow.

9 answers

7 votes
Milo Polte
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August 30, 2021

It's ridiculous that this can't be disabled universally on a wiki used by tons of tech companies.

 

Even this comment box doesn't automatically do "smart" quotes.

5 votes
christopher
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July 27, 2022

+1 for tearing out this ridiculous "feature".

2 votes
Owen Gibbins
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December 1, 2023

It's astounding to see that this thread has been around for years and there's not a single comment from the developers on it. But I'm new around here and perhaps that's just the norm for this forum.

Anyway, another +1 for removing these intrusive modifications of my typing.

2 votes
DPKJ
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September 23, 2020

@Joni I did face same issue and started using ( `  i.e. back quote) before I pasted code, or whenever I wanted to add code.

Joni September 27, 2020

Thank you, for that workaround. It's not the solution I'm looking for as I'd like software systems working FOR me, not AGAINST me. 🤨

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DPKJ
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September 28, 2020

I too become very unhappy when things like these occur.

1 vote
Danver Braganza
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February 14, 2024

Hey, who else is viewing this bug report this in 2024?

Raymond Peck
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February 19, 2024

🙋🏻‍♂️

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1 vote
Rainer R
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September 27, 2021

It's also an insidious problem for JSON.  The odd quotes cause the JSON format checkers to fail your JSON, but not flag the quotes as the issue which can lead to a long and frustrating debug session. This makes it hard (forced to use inconvenient workarounds) to do our documentation in Confluence and allow users to cut and paste sample JSON.

Google docs has a setting.  It is possible, please fix it. 

0 votes
Influential Eliot October 9, 2023

It should be an option either way.

  1. I need what I type to be contextual, when I talk about a 'fieldName' I plant that in a single quote, when I talk about a "field value" then it is a double quote. This is (I think) a pretty universal thing, but even so, it is not uncommon.
  2. When copying and pasting text to other programs (not for code, not everyone is a code head) then smart quotes are just ... woefully annoying. I turn them off in Outlook, too ... it shouldn't be a big deal here.
0 votes
Influential Eliot October 9, 2023

PLEASE_DELETE

0 votes
Scott Posey
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February 18, 2021

You can work around that using the "code snippet" under the "+" menu.

 

However, smart quotes still happen in code format from Bold/Italic/... menu, which I agree is not developer-friendly.

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