3 ms·
The "use" page is missing several details, some important: * 1 The non-ASCII apostrophe is always ’, so programs that automatically insert smart quotes do the
by o11c 3y ago
The "use" page is missing several details, some important:
* 1 The non-ASCII apostrophe is always ’, so programs that automatically insert smart quotes do the wrong thing for apostrophes at the start of a word. Some better examples IMHO: ’tis (it is), ’nuff (enough), ’cause (because), ’em (them), ’fraid (afraid), ’n’ (and),
* 2 The "name ends with s" rule also applies to names ending with "x".
* 3 is arguably just a special case of 2 (e.g. we can say "a holiday of two weeks"), but note that this is very similar to the attributive use (7) which never† uses the plural or an apostrophe but does use a hyphen (a two-week holiday).
* 5 There are, in fact, grammatically-valid uses of "its’", when "it" is a noun rather than a pronoun. A non-derogatory example, in some variants of tag (the children's game), the its’ advantage increases over time.
* 6 Whether apostrophes are used for plurals of non-words is a matter of style, not correctness.
* 7, † Some apparent exceptions are due to words that are actually collective instead of plural for the particular use case. For example, "arms industry" is like "clothes industry". More often, people use errors and omit the required apostrophe. "farmers market" is an abomination.
- mminer237 3y agoTechnically, ’ isn't an apostrophe at all, but a right single quotation mark. I honestly thought this post was going to finally be some validation of my annoyance at everyone using the wrong Unicode character just because font makers make the apostrophe more “ugly”.
- geesh 3y agoAbsolutely not, the Unicode Standard explicitly states that U+2019 (’) RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK “is the preferred character to use for apostrophe”. You can see this in the code chart at https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf and it is restated in section “Apostrophes”, 6.2 General Punctuation.
- mminer237 3y agoHuh, TIL. That's kind of annoying but good to know, thanks!
- couchand 3y agoThe "name ends with s" rule is surprisingly permissive -- I'm surprised an organization that claims to work to protect the apostrophe would allow one to be stripped of its due support 's'. And without an analogous rule for non-name nouns ending in 's', it's just needlessly inconsistent. Protect the apostrophe! Demand the rightful 's'!
- Skeime 3y ago(1) is even more annoying in German where we use single quotes ‚like this‘ (i.e. a comma-looking opening quote and the English opening quote as the closing quote). Apostrophes are the same as in English, though. Unfortunately, (almost?) all smart quote implementations default to replacing ' at the end of a word by a closing quote (even if no opening quote precedes it), so you get tons of apostrophes pointing in the wrong direction (looking like 6 instead of 9).