I've been using single-quoted strings in the assembler interchangeably with double-quoted strings only because I couldn't find an easier way to say:
set S0, 'Dan said, "UGH!"' Unless I used \ sequences for the double-quotes. Personally, I'm in favor of keeping ' and " functionally equivalent in the assembler -- just delimiters. Building too much smarts in the assembler (What'll we do with `` ?) is misdirected effort...