chose one: singe ' or double ". (May need to make exceptions for quoting apostrophes, etc.)
omit quotation marks altogether unless they are required for protecting special characters. Despite my cautiousness, colon : does not appear to require protection
In case people end up using a linter (or running things through yq as someone suggested elsewhere to deal with whitespace), the linter or yq might have some "opinions" built in about these things.
'
or double"
. (May need to make exceptions for quoting apostrophes, etc.):
does not appear to require protection