Introducing Smart Quotes Formatter — Fix Punctuation in One Paste

Straight quotes, double hyphens, and three-period ellipses are keyboard shortcuts that carry over from the typewriter era. They work, but they look unprofessional in published writing. The new Smart Quotes Formatter converts them to proper typographic characters in one paste.

What it converts

• Double quotes "text" → "text" (curly, directional)
• Single quotes and apostrophes 's, 'text' → 's, 'text'
• Em dash --- → —
• En dash -- (with spaces) → –
• Ellipsis ... → … (a single Unicode character)
• Symbols (c), (r), (tm) → ©, ®, ™

Each conversion is a separate toggle, so you can enable only the ones you need — useful when working with Markdown that uses -- in code or frontmatter.

For every publishing workflow

Plain text editors, code editors, and most CMS fields don’t apply smart quotes automatically. Copy your draft in, toggle the conversions you want, and copy the polished text back. The change summary shows exactly what was replaced and how many times, so you stay in control.

To understand the history and rules behind each typographic character — why em dashes are different from en dashes, when apostrophes curve the wrong way — read our curly quotes and typographic punctuation guide.

Free and instant — the Smart Quotes Formatter runs entirely in your browser.