1. Apple doesn't understand speech marks and quotes
The quote ' and speech mark " available directly on the keypad (and any keyboard) are non-handed - they stand in as either the start or end mark, but are not the proper typographic quotes and speech marks which are different for start and end. This is easiest to illustrate using a serif font:
Keyboard characters (non-handed):
' "
Typographic characters (handed):
‘...’ “...”
These special characters are accessible from the keypad by a long press of the standard key and then glide to the required character on the pop-up (the pop-up disappears if you take your finger off, so grabbing these screen-shots took a bit of dexterity!):
Okay so far... except they are displayed on the pop-up menu in reverse order! For the quotes, the open-quote is third from the left, and the close-quote is second from the left. Ditto speech marks: the open-speech is fourth, and the close-speech is third. What's worse, it's not easy to tell that from the pop-up menu - you only find out once the characters are inserted and you have a good look (assuming you are aware of this and know what you are looking for, but in my experience many people don't have the eye for it).
Note that some languages use the subscript version of the mark to open, and the (English) close
or open mark to close. Other languages use «...» (and those
are the right way around on the pop-up menu!).
Note that if you are using a word processor with automatic punctuation, it is probably substituting the correct mark for you when you just type ' or ".
Status: ongoing.
