RE: how to turn off automatic curly-quoting?

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> > Do you know of other occurrences of quoting ordinary text with `...'
> > in Emacs?  I doubt it
> 
> It's done all the time.  Here are some examples:
> 
> "Add `See also ...' to WIDGET if there are any links...."
> "... The `ISO year' corresponds approximately to the Gregorian year, but
> weeks start on Monday and end on Sunday...."
> "If nil, Comint will interpret `carriage control' characters in
> output...."

1. All bugs, IMO, though I don't have the contexts.

Without context it's hard to know just what is the fix in each case.
If "ISO year" is meant to be a placeholder such as a parameter, for
example, then the Elisp manual would instead use ISO-YEAR (no quotes
and no spaces).

I don't see `ISO year' in either the Emacs manual or the Elisp manual.
And yes, it is more likely that doc/manual bugs are found in other
manuals, especially when written by 3rd parties.  Eli doesn't have the
same time to devote to all other manuals as he does to the two main
manuals, where he often identifies and fixes such bugs.  And there
are fewer user eyes on such manuals, so such problems get reported
less often.

2. If you are quoting ordinary text then use whatever Emacs uses to
quote ordinary text (not code, keys, URLs, and file names).

So what does Emacs use to quote ordinary text?

* It might be "..." (which it uses to introduce glossary terms), or it
  might not be.  The use of "..." for anything other than code strings
  is also a bad idea, IMO.  Unless we systematically put inline code
  strings within code quotes (e.g., ‘"a code string"’).

* It could be curly double-quotes, but it doesn't seem to be so far.

* It could be curly single-quotes, if Emacs adopted British style.  It
  could be the case for American style too, but only for an embedded
  quote (of which there are probably none in the existing doc).

Whatever it is, it might well apply to the examples you just gave.
At first sight, at least, those just quote ordinary text, AFAICT.

> Although I tend to agree with you that this is not good style, evidently
> not everyone shares our tastes.  In any event there's no harm translating
> these to curved quotes, as is done in current Emacs master.

There is definitely harm in doing so, since that's the convention you
are adopting for code etc.  That's the point.

Inline code etc. is not just ordinary text-quoting.  You've chosen an
inappropriate mechanism for setting off code etc., one that is easily
confusable with ordinary text quoting.  A no-no, by any ordinary doc
 standards.  But of course, Emacs can do whatever it likes - or apparently
whatever you like.