[texhax] use of " in LaTeX

[Nikolas Arend]

bill purvis wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm trying to produce a document which includes various measurements in inches
> for which the generally accepted notation is ". However, my editor kindly 
> replaces this with `` or '' depending on context, which produces the 
> quotation marks in the output. By judicious fiddling I can get the " into
> my .tex file, but it still ends up as quotation marks which don't look
> right on measurements. I've looked in most places but none of them seem
> to tackle this problem. Can anyone give me a recipe?
>
> Bill
>   
Many editors make such kind of replacements by default when in Latex 
mode to get the quotation marks right. If you don't like that, you 
should have a look at the editor preferences and turn that feature off.
For the inch sign, try putting two single " ' " (not a ") in a math 
environment, like $''$, which probably produces the result you want. The 
" can have a special meaning in Latex, e.g. to print German Umlaute when 
german.sty is used ("a, "o) or actually to produce proper quotation 
marks ("` and "').

HTH,    Nick.