Right single quotation mark

’
Right single quotation mark
U+2019 ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

The Unicode character ’ (U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) is used for both a typographic apostrophe and a single right (closing) quotation mark.[1] This is due to the many fonts and character sets (such as CP1252) that unified the characters into a single code point, and the difficulty of software distinguishing which character is intended by a user's typing.[2] There are arguments that the typographic apostrophe should be a different code point, U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE.[3][better source needed]

The straight apostrophe ' (the "ASCII apostrophe", U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE) is even more ambiguous, as it could also be intended as a left or right quotation mark, or a prime symbol.

  1. ^ "Unicode 13.0.0 final names list". Unicode Consortium. 2020. Archived from the original on 2013-12-17. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  2. ^ Kuhn, Markus (11 December 2007). "ASCII and Unicode quotation marks". University Computing Service, the University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 3 October 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2020.
  3. ^ "Which Unicode character should represent the English apostrophe? (And why the Unicode committee is very wrong.)". 3 June 2015. Archived from the original on 2016-04-07. Retrieved 2020-04-14.