quotes

The quotes CSS property sets how the browser should render quotation marks that are added using the open-quotes or close-quotes values of the CSS content property.

The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.

Syntax

/* Keyword value */
quotes: none;
quotes: auto;

/* <string> values */
quotes: "«" "»";           /* Set open-quote and close-quote to the French quotation marks */
quotes: "«" "»" "‹" "›";   /* Set two levels of quotation marks */

/* Global values */
quotes: inherit;
quotes: initial;
quotes: unset;

Values

none

The open-quote and close-quote values of the content property produce no quotation marks.

auto

Appropriate quote marks will be used for whatever language value is set on the selected elements (i.e. via the lang attribute).

[<string> <string>]+

One or more pairs of <string> values for open-quote and close-quote. The first pair represents the outer level of quotation, the second pair is for the first nested level, next pair for third level and so on.

Formal definition

Formal syntax

none | auto | [ <string> <string> ]+

Examples

Basic quote marks

HTML

<q>To be or not to be. That's the question!</q>

CSS

q {
  quotes: '"' '"' "'" "'";
}
q::before {
  content: open-quote;
}
q::after {
  content: close-quote;
}

Result

Auto quotes

For most browsers, the default value of quotes is auto (Firefox 70+), or the browser otherwise had this default behavior (Chromiums, Safari, Edge), so this example works without it being explicitly being set.

HTML

<div lang="fr">
  <q>Ceci est une citation française.</q>
<div>
<hr>
<div lang="ru">
  <q>Это русская цитата</q>
<div>
<hr>  
<div lang="de">
  <q>Dies ist ein deutsches Zitat</q>
<div>
<hr>
<div lang="en">
  <q>This is an English quote.</q>
<div>

CSS

/*q {
  quotes: auto;
}*/

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• content