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I think this style might come from TeX, based on this comment: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17695/any-reference-on-the-usage-of-a-backtick-and-si
by jamescostian 9y ago
I think this style might come from TeX, based on this comment: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17695/any-reference-on-the-usage-of-a-backtick-and-single-quotation-mark-like-this#comment30967_17696 https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17695/any-refere...
Manpages aren't written in TeX though (apparently they use something called "roff"), but they also contain things like `read' instead of 'read'... perhaps manpage writers tended to like TeX too?
- gpvos 9y agoProbably the other way round: roff/troff/nroff is older than TeX. I guess that on old computer typesetters, ` and ' turned into nicely balanced quotes.
- tankenmate 9y agoroff was the financial back reason that Unix moved from PDP-7 / assembler to PDP-11 / C. http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/aosref/ritchie84evolution.pdf http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/class/aosref/ritchi...