How can I display two single quotes in LaTeX?

Question

I need to display two single quotes without anything between them (I'm preparing computer science lecture slides and I want to display '\''), but of course LaTeX wants to translate '' to closing double quotes.

What can I do to bypass what is now a limitation for me?

This question triggered a lot of different suggestions and I learned a lot from most of them... I elected the answer with the solution I actually chose, but many of them would have worked. Thanks guys! — Eusebius, Sep 24 '12 at 19:36

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:26

6

Depending on whether you need ordinary or "straight" (i.e., perfectly vertical) single quotes, you could use a verbatim environment or some of the macros of the textcomp package:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancyvrb} % for \Verb instruction
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{textcomp} % for \textquotesingle
\begin{document}
\Verb+'\''+

\texttt{\textquotesingle\textbackslash\textquotesingle\textquotesingle}
\end{document}

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answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:26

Mico

506,678

Thanks, useful set of suggestions. I went for verbatim, I just didn't know I could use verbatim stuff in-line. – Eusebius Sep 24 '12 at 19:34

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:32

6

Put a {} between the quotes:

'\textbackslash'{}'

answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:32

lockstep · Answer 3 · 2012-09-24T19:35:12.177

5

Using '\null' or '\hspace{0pt}' works for me.

edited Sep 24 '12 at 19:35

answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:20

lockstep

250,273

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:23

4

You can set a single left quote using \textquoteleft and a single right quote using \textquoteright, so

\textquoteleft\textquoteright

answered Sep 24 '12 at 19:23

Werner

603,163

How can I display two single quotes in LaTeX?

4 Answers4