Apostrophe (’)

How to read it

In Unicode the curly apostrophe is U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK, which the code chart calls “the preferred character to use for apostrophe”. CMOS Shop Talk puts it plainly: a curly apostrophe and a right single quotation mark are the same thing. The straight keyboard mark is U+0027 APOSTROPHE, also called single quote, which Unicode describes as a “neutral (vertical) glyph with mixed usage”. The Unicode Standard calls U+0027 “a particularly overloaded character”: in ASCII it had to stand for the left and right single quotation marks, the apostrophe, a vertical line and the prime. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary gives three uses: letters or numbers left out (she’s for she is, ’63 for 1963), possession (Sam’s watch, the horses’ tails) and the plural of a letter or number (two m’s in “comma”).

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Curly or straight?

Straight quotes are a typewriter habit, according to Butterick’s Practical Typography. In traditional printing every quotation mark was curly, but typewriters replaced the curly opening and closing marks with “ambidextrous” straight ones, freeing two slots for other characters. Ilene Strizver, writing for CreativePro, notes that the computer keyboard layout is based on the typewriter’s, straight quotes included. The Unicode Standard says that U+2019 is preferred when text is set but only U+0027 is on most keyboards, so software commonly converts the straight mark into a curly one as it is typed. CMOS Shop Talk dates this “smart quotes” feature in Microsoft Word to 1993. Chicago calls the straight marks fine for correspondence and social media, and they are the ones used in computer code: Butterick notes that straight quotes in software code are part of its syntax and are reproduced as they are.

Why ’90s often comes out backwards

Smart-quote software takes a mark at the start of a word for an opening quotation mark, so an apostrophe there comes out facing the wrong way: CMOS Shop Talk finds “the ‘90s” everywhere “from The New York Times to social media”. The apostrophe points the same way wherever it falls, as in ’90s, ’em and rock ’n’ roll (Chicago, Butterick), and Butterick adds that no apostrophe is needed before the s in ’70s. Chicago notes that the same backward mark turns up less often in the middle or at the end of a word (isn‘t, tryin‘).

Apostrophe or prime?

The prime ′ (U+2032), the mark for feet and minutes, is a separate character, and Unicode cross-refers it to the straight apostrophe ', which in ASCII also stood for the prime. A true prime is a straight stroke with a slight slope, not a curl (Butterick). See inch and foot marks.

Look-alikes

The opening single quotation mark ‘ (U+2018) faces the other way; Chicago stresses that an apostrophe is not the same character as a left single quotation mark. Unicode has a separate letter apostrophe, ʼ MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE (U+02BC), for transliterations where the mark is a letter, such as a glottal stop. Hawaiian spellings use the ‘okina, a letter for the glottal stop that points upward like an opening quote, as in Hawai‘i (Butterick, Chicago). The grave accent or backtick ` (U+0060), Unicode notes, is sometimes used as an opening quote paired with the apostrophe in technical contexts.

What style guides say

The Guardian’s style guide adds ’s to most names ending in s (Jones’s, James’s) but lets pronunciation decide for some (Mephistopheles’, Waters’), and names the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” for one used wrongly in a plural, as in “pea’s”. Its example of why the mark matters: my sister’s friend’s books, my sister’s friends’ books, my sisters’ friend’s books and my sisters’ friends’ books all mean different things. Cambridge Dictionary separates it’s (it is) from the possessive its, and the US Government Publishing Office’s Style Manual says possessive pronouns take no apostrophe. GOV.UK avoids negative contractions such as can’t and don’t altogether, because “many users find them harder to read, or misread them as the opposite of what they say”.