Single quotes have been mainstream in JS for much longer than AirBnB has been around. Take for example, the Google style guide[1]:<p>&gt; For consistency single-quotes (&#x27;) are preferred to double-quotes (&quot;). This is helpful when creating strings that include HTML<p>Or take the oldest version of Prototype JS I could find (a JS library from the old days), version 1.5 from Jan 2007[2]. A simple search of the source shows 690 occurrences of &#x27; and 48 occurrences of &quot;. jQuery 1.0, dated 2006[3] is a counter example which has many more occurrences of double quotes, but I believe single quotes were generally more common even before that.<p>I think, in addition to the HTML thing mentioned already, PHP also had a lot to do with it, since single quotes would be encouraged in PHP when you just want a plain string.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;google.github.io&#x2F;styleguide&#x2F;javascriptguide.xml?showone=Strings#Strings" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;google.github.io&#x2F;styleguide&#x2F;javascriptguide.xml?show...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;prototypejs.org&#x2F;assets&#x2F;2007&#x2F;1&#x2F;18&#x2F;prototype.js" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;prototypejs.org&#x2F;assets&#x2F;2007&#x2F;1&#x2F;18&#x2F;prototype.js</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;code.jquery.com&#x2F;jquery-1.0.js" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;code.jquery.com&#x2F;jquery-1.0.js</a>