HTML spec states:

Note: According to the HTML 4.01 spec, the q element should render with delimiting quotation marks. This works in Mozilla browsers (Firefox) and Opera. Internet Explorer ignores this entirely.

Example source:

Here comes a short quotation: <q>here is a short quotation here is a short quotation</q>

Should display:

Here comes a short quotation: "here is a short quotation here is a short quotation"

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_q.asp

Since it is not possible to achieve that the quote marks gets displayed in all browsers (without JS), I think the best solution is to remove them from all browsers, so that users may insert them in the source.

See related article at alistapart.com.

Considering this issue closed.