typography of the apostrophe

[Jon Noring]

Jelks wrote:

> Damian Cugley wrote:



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



> Thank you.  (How embarrassing!)


Both the single and double quote-like characters are used for a
variety of purposes, and not only for quotations and grammatical
apostrophes.

There's also the "prime" and "double prime" as used in mathematics
(differential, for example), the "foot and inch marks" (like 6'2"),
angle of arc (5 deg. 25' 33"), as a non-breaking modifier (like
"Ja'afar" from the 1001 Arabian Nights -- note, this is NOT an
apostrophe!)

Of course, the recommended approach is to use the appropriate
typographic characters from Unicode -- then all is solved. All the
above-mentioned uses of quote-like marks (including the typographic
left and right "curly" quotes to define a quotation) have their own
Unicode characters. There will be no ambiguities and no need to do 
weird gyrations to differentiate the several uses of quote-like marks.

Of course, if ASCII-conformance is required, where one can only use
the keyboard " and ' characters in a "master" document, then games
have to be played to differentiate the " and ' used as quotation marks
from the other uses of these characters.

Jon Noring