symbols - What is the best way to use quotation mark glyphs? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange:

``this'' / `this' is the proper way
"this"/'this' produces two closing quotes and 'is annoying to readers'

There’s also CTAN: Package csquotes that ‘is fantastic’, including smartly doing nested quotes, correct quotes for diff languages, and ‘generally always doing what you want it it’:

\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}

...
\enquote{My quoted text}

Another answer suggests

\newcommand{\q}[1]{``#1''}

...

\q{whatever}

I’ve been using more custom latex commands lately and this goes in that direction.

I guess creating a \q that does autoquotes w/ csquotes is the way to go?