From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Sat Feb 03 2007 - 17:02:47 CST
Hans Aberg <haberg at math dot su dot se> wrote:
> Well, the apostrophe used in language is not semantically a right
> single quotation mark. There might be some subtle rendering
> differences between a U+2019 and a proper, linguistic apostrophe, like
> in spacing.
>
> And if U+0027 is a multipurpose character, then a there is a gap in
> the Unicode character set.
>
> And then: a new character should added.
The NamesList file [1], which is a formal part of the Unicode Character
Database, says U+2019 is the preferred character for apostrophe. It has
this annotation under three characters: U+0027, U+02BC, and U+2019
itself.
Regardless of whether there is a school of thought that "apostrophe" and
"right single quotation mark" should be different characters, this is
what the Unicode Technical Committee has decided, and while they may
change their minds — in Unicode 1.0 the preferred apostrophe was
U+02BC — I would be amazed if they did so.
I'm sure Ken Whistler will come along soon with a better-articulated and
more authoritative version of this.
[1] http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/NamesList.txt
-- Doug Ewell * Fullerton, California, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14 http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/ http://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.html http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages
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