Google Docs – How to Change Default Quotation Symbols

nhinkle gives the germ of the answer.

Automatic Corrections

Automatic corrections for → and ← are included as defaults. You just need to add your own for ↑ and ↓. (Maybe |^ and |v?)

While editing a document,

1. Select Preferences from the Tools drop-down menu.
2. Either deselect the checkbox next to the word for which you'd like to disable text substitution, or press the "x" to the right of the word to delete the row.

Yes, there are ways to control the indentation of paragraphs in Drive, and there are ways to create itemized lists. All of these options are available in the text formatting icons at the top of your document (shown in image)

Here is advice on both:

For paragraph indentations:

You can increase or decrease the paragraph indents by using the icons on the right:

This will increase the indent, and keep it there until you change the indentation levels.

You can also access these options by going to Format > Paragraph styles

Update - adding info on keyboard shortcuts

A keyboard solution is to use the Tab key. If you hit Tab at the beginning of a line that already contains characters, it will indent the text and preserve the indentation level on subsequent lines (Shift + Tab at the beginning will decrease the indent). Any tabbing done in the middle of a line or at the start of a new line without existing characters will produce the regular Tab without preserving the indentation level on future lines.

For bulleted and numbered lists

You can get there by using the icons in the text formatting bar found at the top of the page. Look for the little numbered or unnumbered list icons next to the paragraph indentations.

Some keyboard shortcuts are:

• For a numbered list, the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + Shift + 7
• For an unordered (bulleted) list, the keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + Shift + 8