Re: Apostrophes, quotation marks, keyboards and typography

From: Michael Everson (everson@indigo.ie)
Date: Mon Jul 19 1999 - 13:36:12 EDT


Markus Kuhn wrote:

> Unicode declares U+02BC to be the recommended
> character that should be used as an apostrophe in words such as "isn't",

I'm glad Markus brought up the subject, because it is problematic.

John Cowan wrote:

>This was fixed in Unicode 2.1: that apostrophe is U+2019. The only
>time U+02BC is used is in languages where ' is a *letter*.
>See <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr8.html#3.6 Apostrophe
>Semantics Errata>

Yes, "letter apostrophe" U+02BC and "punctuation apostrophe" U+2019 have to
be distinguished. Plain ASCII apostrophe U+0027 is ambiguous as to its use.

>So keyboards should only generate U+02BC when operating in
>such languages; otherwise, U+2019 is the Right Thing.

Well, this is a bit simplistic. The situation is in fact a little more
complex than this, and Markus' concerns about clumsy algorithms need to be
addressed. I think some important points are being missed. I'm writing a
short paper on it, which I'll post as a PDF file.

--
Michael Everson * Everson Gunn Teoranta * http://www.indigo.ie/egt
15 Port Chaeimhghein Íochtarach; Baile Átha Cliath 2; Éire/Ireland
Guthán: +353 1 478 2597 ** Facsa: +353 1 478 2597 (by arrangement)
27 Páirc an Fhéithlinn;  Baile an Bhóthair;  Co. Átha Cliath; Éire



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