Thats interesting. I was using Lynx. A quick test with <q>hello</q> gives "hello" as expected. So whatever it is, you must be doing something else. Please dont use CSS to insert characters into normal text, that will fall down if CSS is not supported. I know, in this day and age, that sounds unusual. But abusing CSS to do something it wasnt ment to be doing is still no good idea IMO.
How is using a feature of a language, that is part of the language’s standard, for its intended purpose “abusing” the language to “do something it wasn[’]t me[a]nt to be doing”?