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Paired opening and closing marks, as against the straight typewriter tick.
Also known as: Smart quotes, Curly quotes, Sixes and nines, Comma shapes above the line
Real quotation marks come in handed pairs that curl toward the text they enclose. The straight vertical tick is a typewriter compromise that has outlived the typewriter, and the difference is not decorative: the paired marks say which end of a quotation you are at.
Handed opening and closing marks — shaped like a raised six and a raised nine — enclosing quoted speech or a cited phrase.
The straight vertical marks on a keyboard are the typewriter's compromise, one key doing the work of four. They carry no handedness, so nothing in the mark itself distinguishes the start of a quotation from its end.
The closing single mark and the apostrophe are the same character, which is why automatic substitution turns a leading apostrophe in a contraction the wrong way round — 'twas set as ’twas by hand and as ‘twas by software.
A recurring and very visible error in published text.
Double marks are conventional in American practice and single marks in much British practice, with the other kind used for a quotation inside a quotation.
United States and United Kingdom
Paired raised marks shaped like small filled commas with a curved tail, the opening pair turned with their tails up and the closing pair with their tails down.
A prime is a straight slanted tick and a quotation mark is a curled one; the two are constantly substituted for each other.