Yes, the W3C publishes HTML standards.
They also provide a validator at http://validator.w3.org/
the validator is ok with both for XHTML 1.0 Strict.
There is several HTML standards, so whether it’s "acceptable" entirely depends on which you're using. Furthermore collaborative projects may have a coding style which defines to use one or the other. Using "
is de-facto standard, even if the HTML standard may allow '
as well.