Uses for the quot entity in HTML

Question

I am revising some XHTML files authored by another party. As part of this effort, I am doing some bulk editing via Linq to XML.

I've just noticed that some of the original source XHTML files contain the " HTML entity in text nodes within those files. For instance:

<p>Greeting: &quot;Hello, World!&quot;</p>

And that when recovering the XHTML text via XElement.ToString(), the " entities are being replaced by plain double-quotes:

<p>Greeting: "Hello, World!"</p>

Question: Can anyone tell me what the motivation might have been for the original author to use the " entities instead of plain double-quotes? Did those entities serve a purpose which I don't fully appreciate? Or, were they truly unnecessary as I suspect?

I do understand that " would be necessary in certain contexts, such as when there is a need to place a double-quote within an HTML attribute. For instance:

<a href="/images/hello_world.jpg" alt="Greeting: &quot;Hello, World!&quot;">
  Greeting</a>

Answer 1

It is impossible and unnecessary to know the motivation for using " in element content; however, possible motivations include: misunderstanding of HTML rules; use of software that generates such code (probably because its author thought it was "safe"); and misunderstanding of the meaning of ": Many people appear to believe it generates "smart quotes" (they apparently never looked at the actual results).

In any case, there is never a need to use "in HTML element content (XHTML or any other HTML version). Nothing in any HTML specification assigns a special meaning to the plain character "there.

As the question says, it has its role in attribute values, but even in them, it is mostly simpler to just use single quotes as delimiters if the value contains a double quote, e.g. alt='Greeting: "Hello, World!"' or, if you are allowed to correct errors in natural language texts, to use proper quotation marks, e.g. alt="Greeting: “Hello, World!”"