Question on rejection notice

[John_Q_Dough]

Can someone please explain exactly what this means?

“Kindly use straight quotes in title and descriptions. Thanks!”

This is the only comment in the rejection notification that I received.

Many thanks,

 

[jsmiam]

That’s not one of the more common questions here. Officially, I don’t know.

But here’s a plausible possibility. Perhaps it has something to do with “smart quotes”? Literotica may be more sensitive to them in a story title and description.

If you randomly click through this thread (https://forum.literotica.com/threads/prowritingaid.1648599/#post-102241624) as an example, you’ll notice that more posts there have old fashioned quotes, where the same character is used for the left/open and right/closing quote, rather than the fancier balanced angled inwards quotes or apostrophes.

Keeping in mind the story side and the forums side are to a degree two different worlds, I’m mainly using the forum entries as examples of the quote. (Ironically as I write this, my browser seems to be using smart quotes. But it may apply just to the story title and description.

 

[John_Q_Dough]

Thanks for your reply. I’ll study up on what smart quotes are, and see if I can correct the errors of my ways.

 

[SmilingLez]

Since their system is so old I don't believe it recognizes curly quotation marks in the title properly

 

[jsmiam]

Copy and paste this /these:
'
"

 

[John_Q_Dough]

Pardon my ignorance but what is the difference between the two? Rules for useage?
Thanks

 

[John_Q_Dough]

Google’s your friend




Search Assist



The difference between a single quotation mark (') and a double quotation mark (") is primarily in their usage. Single quotation marks are often used for quotes within quotes, while double quotation marks are used for direct quotes, dialogue, and titles of short works in American English.

Understanding Quotation Marks​

Quotation marks are punctuation marks used to indicate direct speech, quotations, or titles of short works. There are two main types: single quotation marks and double quotation marks.

Single Quotation Marks (’)​

• Usage: Primarily used for quotes within quotes. For example:
  • She said, “I heard him say ‘hello’.”
• Regional Preference: More common in British English for general use, but can also appear in American English in specific contexts.

Double Quotation Marks (“”)​

• Usage: Used for direct quotes, dialogue, and titles of short works like articles, poems, or songs. For example:
  • He exclaimed, “What a beautiful day!”
• Regional Preference: Standard in American and Canadian Engli

 

[TheLobster]

“ ” " are three different characters. When they talk about ‘straight quotes’, people mean the third one.

I’m not sure why Literotica demands only straight quotes in titles; the only hypothesis I can come up with absolutely horrifying, so let’s hope it’s not that.

Maybe the way they’re building SQL queries on the backend is purely textual, without using query parameters, and so they’re scared that weird quotes might open them to SQL injections (more so than they already may be, that is).

In any case, to comply with this request you can probably just delete the curly quotes in the story submission form fields and type them again. I reckon that you probably copy-pasted your title and description from some editor that replaces straight quotes with curlies (common if you write on Mac), but the browsers generally don’t do that.

If that fails, copy-paste the character from one of the posts above.

 

[StrentWriter]

I had this about a week ago. They have (and it appears to be recently!) decided they don’t like quotation marks in actual title box, so I now have a mismatch of stories with quotation marks in the title and some without. For the record, going forward I am not using quotation marks in the titles.

More bothering, because it required a substantial rewrite, but if you copy/paste a story from, say, notes on an iphone, or ipad, into the main Lit text box it occasionally changes the quotation marks from straight to curly, which is infuriating.

I’ve basically come round to the conclusion that I can’t italicise, bold or otherwise format anyway so this is just another strike against the current lit set up.

Infuriating because I am actually publishing more regularly now and it is getting easier to do so, but a lot of the things I enjoy about writing have been simplified massively to avoid getting stuck in rejection purgatory.

 

[John_Q_Dough]

What is odd to me is I do all my writing on my phone. No copy pasta for me. I am limited as to what the characters are.

 

[jsmiam]

Hold the quote key for an extended press. It’ll probably offer you the regular symbol along with some other too.