[DiapDealer]

Very briefly, I would:

1) from the main menu, use "Insert-->Special Character" to insert both an opening and closing curly quote into a dummy document template (the point is, it's temporary. Don't mess up a real epub).

2) highlight the opening quote in Code View/Book View and right click on it. Then select "Add to Clips" from the context menu. Give the clip a descriptive name in the clip editor that opens and save/close the dialog. Repeat step 2 for the closing quote.

3) Open the Clip Editor ("Tools-->Clip Editor"), if it's not already open, and note the position of your newly created clips. For the purpose of this exercise, I'm going to assume that the "Opening Quote" clip is in the first position and the "Closing Quote" clip is in the second position. You can drag the clips to whatever position/order you want. Just note what positions your two clips are in before you go to assign keyboard shortcuts. Close (Saving if necessary) the Clip Editor.

4) Open the Keyboard Shortcuts preference widget ("Edit-->Preferences; then Keyboard Shortcuts from the resulting dialog). Scroll to the Clip entry number that corresponds to the opening quote clip (If the clip was first, it's "Clip 1"; second is Clip 2, etc...) and highlight it. In the "Shortcut" text box at the bottom of the dialog, remove any shortcut that is currently there and use the keyboard to assign the keystroke combination you desire. Then hit the "Assign" button. Repeat step 4 for the closing quote.

**Note: Your desired shortcuts conflict with the default keyboard shortcuts for "File->New" and the "Merge" feature (a message appears below the Shortcut text field when you try to assign shortcuts that are already assigned). You'll need to either choose shortcuts that aren't already taken, or you'll need to change the existing "File->New" and "Merge" keyboard shortcuts to something else first.

Hope that helps/jogs your memory!