| | +# Quotation marks |
| | + |
| | +When converting straight single quotes into curled single quotes, the |
| | +application offers a variety of entities to use for encoding: |
| | + |
| | +* **regular** -- Do not encode. |
| | +* **modifier** -- Encode as \ʼ, the modifier letter apostrophe. |
| | +* **apos** -- Encode as \', curled when typeset to PDF. |
| | +* **aposhex** -- Encode as \', the apostrophe's numeric value. |
| | +* **quote** -- Encode as \’, the right single quotation mark, which |
| | +is typically curled in HTML and XHTML documents by default. |
| | +* **quotehex** -- Encode \’, the right single quotation mark's numeric |
| | +value. |
| | + |
| | +When typsetting into a PDF document, only the semantically correct value |
| | +of \' will be curled automatically. |
| | + |
| | +# History |
| | + |
| | +Quotation marks trace back to Ancient Greek, later adopted to the |
| | +diplé (⸖) circa 625 BCE, and having a form that hints to the evolution of |
| | +its curve. By the seventeenth century, the punctuation mark grew common |
| | +and by the nineteenth century, Western Europe had turned the convexity of |
| | +quotation mark pairs outward. |
| | + |
| | +Early mechanical typewriters, circa 1825, lacked many punctuation marks. As |
| | +technology improved, additional keys were added while some keys played dual |
| | +roles (such as I for 1). Straight single and double quotes could be co-opted |
| | +for: quotation marks and apostrophes; feet and inches marks; and prime and |
| | +double-prime. There wasn't a pressing need to add curled versions. |
| | + |
| | +Eventually straight quotes were codified for computers. Unfortunately, the |
| | +apostrophe carried with it the baggage from typewriters. That is, burgeoning |
| | +encoding standards failed to let users capture the nuances of the English |
| | +language; computers forced users to treat the apostrophe as a straight quote. |
| | +Standards bodies suggested using the right single quotation mark for an |
| | +apostrophe instead, but this loses its semantic meaning. As a consequence, |
| | +parsing English quotations, especially British English, is now riddled with |
| | +ambiguity. |
| | + |
| | +Consider the phrase: |
| | + |
| | +> Ambiguity lurks in "'cause the horses'". |
| | + |
| | +Does `'cause` mean _because_ or _induce_? The answer determines whether |
| | +an open left single quote is used or an apostrophe, semantically speaking. |
| | +It's amazing how decisions from 200 years ago still affect modern systems. |
| | + |
| | |