I realized I've been switching between them with no understanding as to why, and am finding it hard to search for.
' '
and " "
are the same thing; they are used to define string literals.
Things without quotes can be an identifier, keyword, non-string literal, property name or a number (may have missed one).
Examples:
"hello world" literal (string)
'hello world' literal (string) with same contents
document identifier (object)
{ a: 1 } property name
if keyword (start conditional statement)
3.4 literal (number)
/abc/ literal (regex object)
String literals that are enclosed in single quotes don't need escaped double quotes and visa versa, e.g.:
'<a href="">click me</a>' HTML containing double quotes
"It's going to rain" String containing single quote