Why is the First Selection in a Font Family Always Quoted?

Question

In almost all CSS font-family declarations I've seen, the first font selection is quoted.

Example:

{
font-family:"Times New Roman", Georgia, Serif;
}

The first 2 selections are both specific fonts, while the third selection 'Serif' is a generic font family. Why is Times New Roman in quotations, but not Georgia? This discussion talks about how quotations are not always needed, but it doesn't explain why only the first selected font would be in quotations.

Answer 1

It's because Times New Roman has spaces, any other that has should be quoted as well.

Answer 2

This is interesting, I figure it has to do with spacing in the name.

The official spec says this:

To avoid mistakes in escaping, it is recommended to quote font family names that contain white space, digits, or punctuation characters other than hyphens:

So, it probably has nothing to do with being the first one :-)

Reference: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#font-family-prop