Uncurl Your Inch and Foot Marks

Quotation marks are not the same as inch and foot marks. 

Quotation marks are curly.

Inch and foot marks are straight.

The image below shows both straight and curly marks and their Windows, Mac, and HTML key commands.  

A Simple Trick

In most word-processing apps, the smart quotes (curly) feature is automatically turned on.

Here’s an easy tip for changing curly marks to straight if you need inch or foot marks: Type the mark, then immediately hit the undo key command (command + z on a Mac; control + z on a Windows machine). This trick works in Word, Google Docs, and Pages.

Further Reading

Visit Butterick’s Practical Typography to learn more about the difference between curly and straight marks.