@cindex curly quotes
@cindex curved quotes
When a documentation string refers to a Lisp symbol, write it as it
-would be printed (which usually means in lower case), surrounding it
-with curved single quotes (@t{‘..’}). There are two exceptions: write
-@code{t} and @code{nil} without surrounding punctuation. For example:
+would be printed (which usually means in lower case), with a grave
+accent @samp{`} before and apostrophe @samp{'} after it. There are
+two exceptions: write @code{t} and @code{nil} without surrounding
+punctuation. For example:
@example
- CODE can be `lambda', nil, or t.
-CODE can be ‘lambda’, nil, or t.
++CODE can be `lambda', nil, or t.
@end example
-@noindent
-@xref{Quotation Marks,,, emacs, The GNU Emacs Manual}, for how to
-enter curved single quotes.
-
-Documentation strings can also use an older single-quoting convention,
-which quotes symbols with grave accent @t{`} and apostrophe
-@t{'}: @t{`like-this'} rather than @t{‘like-this’}. This
-older convention was designed for now-obsolete displays in which grave
-accent and apostrophe were mirror images.
-Documentation using this convention is converted to the user's
-preferred format when it is copied into a help buffer. @xref{Keys in
-Documentation}.
+Note that when Emacs displays these doc strings, Emacs will usually
+display @samp{`} (grave accent) as @samp{‘} (left single quotation
+mark) and @samp{'} (apostrophe) as @samp{’} (right single quotation
+mark), if the display supports displaying these characters.
+@xref{Keys in Documentation}. (Some previous versions of this section
+recommended using the non-@acronym{ASCII} single quotation marks
+directly in doc strings, but this is now discouraged, since that leads
+to broken help string displays on terminals that don't support
+displaying those characters.)
@cindex hyperlinks in documentation strings
Help mode automatically creates a hyperlink when a documentation string