typography of the apostrophe

[Jelks Cabaniss]

Damian Cugley wrote:

>> Disco?  What about "rock 'n roll"?

 

> Worse—it should have two apostrophes, as in 'rock 'n' roll' ('rock 'n'

> roll'). 


Thank you.  (How embarrassing!)


> Almost any quotation guessification system is going to have

> trouble getting that right.


You could $cockney-fy "rock 'n' roll" along with "'tis" and the others.
(You have to wonder how Shakespeare would feel about his "Whether 'tis
nobler in the mind ..." being referred to as "cockney".  Slings and arrows
indeed.)

Aaron's example, OTOH, would slip through everything.
 

> Trying to generate correct quotation marks mechanically is always

> going to be a lot of trouble. 


Having written a "Smart Quotes" clip for my text editor -- long before I'd
heard of Smartypants -- I agree.  But I've found that mechanical generation
+ a "$cockney" override handles 99%+ of the bulk of texts I've converted.


> It is a little bit crazy that computer

> keyboards still have weird symbols like § ± ` ~ on them but not the

> marks of quotation. 


Or em/en-dashes, or copyright/trademark/registered symbols, or [whatever
your local use cases].  (My U.S. keyboard does not have § or ± on it, BTW
and FWIW.)  There are only so many keys.  Besides the usual "chorded"
(ALT/Option) input methods and the tortuous "Insert Symbol" methods, most
OSes do have something along these lines available:

	http://tinyurl.com/4fymo  (Microsoft)


/Jelks