RE: how to turn off automatic curly-quoting?

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

> > How about 'symbol-quoting-style'?  Isn't that more accurate than
> > 'text-quoting-style'?
> 
> No, as the style is used for quoting pretty much anything, not just
> symbols.  It can quote symbols, node references, file names,

Yes.

> and various English phrases such as ‘C source code’. 

The latter is a mistake (a bug) IMHO.  I assume you are referring
to the fact that `C-h f' shows this:

 forward-char is an interactive built-in function in ‘C source code’.

The quoted phrase here is ordinary English.  It happens to be a link.
Whoever added that linked phrase should not have quoted it in any way.

Do you know of other occurrences of quoting ordinary text with `...'
in Emacs?  I doubt it, but there might be one or two such bugs.  It
happens that people updating the manual sometimes use "..." or `...'
inappropriately.  But it is rare.

The kind of "quoting" we are talking about (which was `...') should
_not at all be used for ordinary text quoting_.  It should be limited
to what is shown in most doc systems using a monospaced font.  The
best example is showing code fragments inline, i.e., in the middle of
a sentence of ordinary text.

> And once we change the ‘message’ function to use the style, it'll
> quote even more things.

That would be quite misguided - a big mistake, IMHO.  But please be
specific about what change you have in mind here.

Think ordinary docs, and how they talk about code fragments.  They
typically use a monospace font for that.  Or sometimes they use
highlighting.  They do *not* use quote marks.  And most importantly,
they do not use the same thing they use for quoting ordinary text.

If you start using ‘...’ (curly quotes) for everything under the
sun then you will lose the ability to distinguish things.  And you
will confuse readers.