Re: ASCII-only startup message?

[Random832]

Drew Adams <address@hidden> writes:
> This is completely wrong.  Do you have a reference to back up
> such a claim?
>
> I have never seen any doc or typography guideline that favors
> a quotation mark over an apostrophe for English contractions,
> possessives, or non-word plurals.  Quite the contrary.  These
> use cases are precisely the raison d'être for the apostrophe.

Er, the question isn't whether to use a quotation mark or an
apostrophe, it's whether to use a curved apostrophe or a
straight apostrophe. That Unicode happens to unify straight
apostrophe with straight single quote and curved apostrophe with
curved single quote isn't relevant.

> (But it is not about straight vs curved apostrophes.  Any ol'
> apostrophe will do.  It's about apostrophes vs single quotation
> marks.)

I have no idea why you think U+0027 is more an apostrophe, or
less a single quotation mark, than U+2019. The fact that it is
required to use a typographically suboptimal neutral/"straight"
glyph is precisely because of its historical use as a quotation
mark (and as a prime symbol, stress mark, etc).