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The current draft (http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-q-element) says: Quotation punctuation (such as quotation marks) must not appear immediately before, after, or inside q elements; they will be inserted into the rendering by the user agent. I think this could be phrased less ambiguous along the line of this: Authors SHOULD not use quotation punctuation (such as quotation marks) immediately before, after, or inside q elements, because user agents MUST insert them into the rendering, unless the default rendering is overridden by CSS. I'd appreciate if any people who are more experienced than me would shape this text into something that is suited to go into a draft. See also http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/48 and http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/1328.html
That particular paragraph is only saying the first part (what authors are to do). It's already a must: # Quotation punctuation MUST NOT appear # immediately before, after, or inside q elements The second requirement, regarding user agents, is in the rendering section: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#punctuation-and-decorations If this doesn't address your comment, could you elaborate on how the statement is ambiguous?