Smart quotes as you describe them are a Microsoft office thing that really only works in Microsoft office programs. Everyone else sees little squares where your "smart" quotes are. It really makes it look like you can not type properly really.

You can insert them in unicode document like Thunderbird email, but they are simply not on your keyboard so some special something will always be required.

Copy and paste is usually the best way to insert such things are remembering the code is simply a pain. This is a good source of copy material. https://www.w3.org/wiki/Common_HTML_entities_used_for_typography

What is it about Thunderbird that makes it impossible for there to be a SETTING that prefers smart quotes? Microsoft Office (Word) has such a setting ... Mac Mail has smart quotes ... I can paste something with smart quotes into a Thunderbird email, and they don't get destroyed ...

I can't believe that after all these decades no one has figured out how to make it possible to cross the great divide between the Microsoft WORLD VIEW and typography that's decent.

Guess I'll just give up and switch over to Mac Mail, leaving Thunderbird as an archive of emails past ... SOB

By special keystrokes did you mean this:

To manually select smart quotes, type the following keys simultaneously.

• Type Option+] and Shift+Option+] for the left (open) and right (closed) single quote mark or apostrophe, respectively.
   
• Type Option+[ and Shift+Option+[ for the left and right curved double quotation marks, respectively.

From: https://www.lifewire.com/typing-quotes-apostrophes-and-primes-1074104

Not the most intuitive, but easier than Windows, if it doesn't cause the problem Matt mentioned. (I don't have a Mac to test such things.)

Yes, by special keystrokes I meant a combo that make a smart quote appear. That's way too laborious. Who would ever want to bother doing that?

I'm pretty sure the ultimate answer is going to be "No, there's no setting, no WAY to have smart quotes happen automatically in Thunderbird, give it UP!"

Fritzie said

I'm pretty sure the ultimate answer is going to be "No, there's no setting, no WAY to have smart quotes happen automatically in Thunderbird, give it UP!"

Yep, you got it, so why ask the question if you already know the answer?. There has not even been an add-on since version 17. But there are apparently 66 people using it. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/smart-quotes/?src=ss

Just remember, OSX and IOS use an apple special version of a carriage return line feed that makes lots of their mails loose the line/paragraph marks when they are sent to non mac products. This forum has lots of example of folk getting mail as a single inordinately long line. Personally I think that is a far worse issue that the lack of typographic quotes that have not been used in businesses (except for Microsoft office where the enterprise allows it) for about 50 years. Straight quotes have been the business norm since the manual typewriter was invented in the 19th Century.

Okay Matt. 'Nuff said. Kind of almost like a politico/religious thing: Mac vs The Other Camp. I'll move on now ...