Dan and Cheryl’s Place

How To Type Curly Quotes In Mac OS X

Mac OS X has an easy way to type “curly” quotes and apostrophes instead of "straight" versions. I used both versions in that sentence to show the difference. Here is a bigger version to make the distinction more visible:

Many people think “curly” quotes look better than "straight" ones.

You can use the following keyboard shortcuts to type a single or double curly quote:

1. Single quote open (‘) — option ]
2. Single quote close (’) — shift option ]
3. Double quote open (“) — option [
4. Double quote close (”) — shift option [

However, I think it makes more sense to use [ and ] for open and close versions instead of the shift key. I found myself constant typing “mismatched‘ quotes. I also wanted to use the shift key for double quotes since that’s how the normal keyboard button works.

1. Single quote open (‘) — option [
2. Single quote close (’) — option ]
3. Double quote open (“) — option shift [
4. Double quote close (”) — option shift ]

Since OS X supports custom key bindings, I looked for a way to fix this. The trick is to create a file called DefaultKeyBinding.dict in the KeyBindings folder inside your Library folder. You can use this file to override the default key bindings for most applications.

Here are my changes. Please feel free to copy the settings below and save them to your own computer. You may need to create the KeyBindings folder if it isn’t already there.

/*
 Updates Apple's default keybindings for curly quotes.
 See http://www.danandcheryl.com/1072

 Save this file here:
 /Users/<name>/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict
*/
{
    "~[" = ("insertText:", "‘");
    "~]" = ("insertText:", "’");
    "~{" = ("insertText:", "“");
    "~}" = ("insertText:", "”");
}