[XeTeX] Typographic question : quotation marks and apostrophes

Tobias Schoel liesdiedatei at googlemail.com
Thu Dec 15 18:18:24 CET 2011


Hi List,

On 15.12.2011 17:02, Jonathan Kew wrote:
> On 15 Dec 2011, at 14:30, Philip TAYLOR wrote:
>
>> I know that a number of excellent typographers inhabit this
>> list, so I would like to pick their brains if I may ?
>>
>> In "Two wide ‘weaver’s windows’, usually found on the ground floor"
>> (which could equally well be "Two wide ‘weavers’ windows’, usually
>> found on the ground floor", but I am not the author), the apostrophe
>> of "weaver’s/weavers’" is the same Unicode character as the closing
>> quotation mark of "windows’".  Should it be ?
>
> Yes.
But why? They are semantically different. Does this “identity” come from 
historical roots?

>
> A couple of excerpts from NamesList.txt:
>
> 0027    APOSTROPHE
>          = apostrophe-quote (1.0)
>          = APL quote
>          * neutral (vertical) glyph with mixed usage
>          * 2019 is preferred for apostrophe
So does this mean, that u0027 should not be used at all for natural 
languages? I don't think, unicode would stretch its recommendation to 
programming languages, which use u0027 as string delimiters.

>          * preferred characters in English for paired quotation marks are 2018&  2019
Thank nature, I mostly speak German … Nein!
>          x (modifier letter prime - 02B9)
>          x (modifier letter apostrophe - 02BC)
>          x (modifier letter vertical line - 02C8)
>          x (combining acute accent - 0301)
>          x (prime - 2032)
So what's the recommendation for math mode in XeTeX concerning 
prime/apostroph?
>          x (latin small letter saltillo - A78C)
>
> ...
>
> 2019    RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
>          = single comma quotation mark
>          * this is the preferred character to use for apostrophe
>          x (apostrophe - 0027)
>          x (modifier letter apostrophe - 02BC)
>          x (heavy single comma quotation mark ornament - 275C)
>
> JK

Thanks

Toscho


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