(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 quot

(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).