My understanding regarding typographic quotes:

In the U.S., double quotes are used — with single quotes reserved to enclose quotations nested inside double quotes. (Mary said, “I couldn’t believe my ears when he said ‘I take the responsability.’ ”) In England, the opposite practice prevails. Other languages have still different conventions (French, for instance, uses small angle brackets for quotes).

Typically, there is no extra space between the quotes and the words they enclose. However, you should watch for special situations the need individual attention (e.g., the quote mark touching an ascender, cap, symbol or single quotes immediately adjacent to double quotes, as in the example above) — in these cases you need to manually increase the spacing between the quote and the offending character.

Hope this helps.

If you need to set text in other languages, refer to this amazing compilation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usage
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What language are you setting?
French DOES have a space between the quotation mark and the word.

have a look at linotype:
http://www.linotype.com/2729/quotationmarksandguillemets.html