How to prevent LaTeX from turning "a to an umlaut in German?

Question

I want to input a string "a" in a LaTeX document using German (\documentclass[ngerman]{article}), but I do not want "a to be turned into ä; what can I do? (I know \verb works; are there any other solutions?) Thanks!

Answer 1

\dq a should work. Note also that proper quotation marks would be

"`like this"'

i.e. "quotation backtick" and "quotation apostrophe". (Also see the csquotes package.)

Answer 2

Assuming that you really want the "straight" double quote: The correct command is \textquotedbl but \string" works too and is shorter:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[ansinew]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

\begin{document}
\string"a\string" 

\textquotedbl a\textquotedbl
\end{document}

Answer 3

1. Maybe it's a good thing if you improve your knowledge about quotation, but
2. for the moment simply write "{}a{}"

Answer 4

other answers are appropriate if this is ordinary text. but if you want, for example, to indicate how to type something, you may want to use "typewriter" style, so

\verb+"a"+

should give you a suitable result.