diff --git a/bin/terraform-docs.awk b/bin/terraform-docs.awk
index 58964644..bd6b2b7f 100644
--- a/bin/terraform-docs.awk
+++ b/bin/terraform-docs.awk
@@ -61,7 +61,12 @@
       if (type ~ "object") {
         print "  type = \"object\""
       } else {
-        print "  type = \"" $3 "\""
+          # legacy quoted types: "string", "list", and "map"
+          if ($3 ~ /^[[:space:]]*"(.*?)"[[:space:]]*$/) {
+            print "  type = " $3
+          } else {
+            print "  type = \"" $3 "\""
+          }
       }
     }
   }