Talk:Apostrophe

Using an apostrophe with words ending with an S

Much as I loath seeing James' (as I prefer to write, and to say, James's, or Alex's, or Jesus's), there are times when ambiguity can creep in due to having no S after the apostrophe for a singular noun.

One such example is with the names Carlo and Carlos. If I refer to Carlos', then is it a plural of Carlo, or a singular for Carlos? Pronunciation-wise there a difference, but not when written. The only way to disambiguate is to use Carlos' for multiples of Carlo, and Carlos's for singular of Carlos (plural would be Carloses' )

apos

I suggest merging everything useful from the apos article into Apostrophe. It is only about the term as an abbreviation, which should be obvious when apos redirects to Apostrophe, and the XML entity, which is already briefly mentioned under Apostrophe#Entering apostrophes. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 08:23, 23 January 2012 (UTC).

Redirected; there wasn’t anything to really merge. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 03:17, 5 February 2012 (UTC).

Summary of rules for most situations

I find the presentation of "Summary of rules for most situations" slightly odd because the first bullet point contains relatively specialised detail about possessive pronouns. I would expect to see ordinary nouns explained first. Should we change it around? 86.176.211.121 (talk) 03:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Infobox

I am sure that the "typographic" qualifier is useful in the main presentation. There are several varieties of apostrophe, and the article cover at least typographic and typewriter ones combined. In DePiep's version of infobox the contraposition of varieties is not clear. I am not sure that ʼ should persist in infobox because there is its own modifier letter apostrophe stub, but I did not see valid arguments for removal. If even IPA uses it under the name "apostrophe" – why not indeed? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

For a comment on an important grammatical matter, that post is sadly ungrammatical. So much so that I don't get its point. HiLo48 (talk) 22:06, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the problem relates to the varieties of apostrophe depicted at the top of the infobox. I made an edit that I now realise was based on a misunderstanding, then further edits were subsequently made. Whatever the history, I think the current presentation is unsatisfactory. For most purposes there are two main apostrophe forms: typewriter and typographic. In the infobox, we currently give one of these main prominence, and simply call it "apostrophe". We then give the typewriter apostrophe equal prominence with the very rare "letter apostrophe", which confusingly appears (at least on my browser) identical to the typographic apostrophe. I don't think we even need to mention the "letter apostrophe" here, or, if we do, it should not be given equal billing with the typewriter apostrophe. Also, if we specificallly mention "typewriter apostrophe" here, then we should call the other one "typographic apostrophe", not simply "apostrophe".86.146.105.118 (talk) 23:48, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

keyboard-drown-some-keys-like-space-unusable-will-reply-later-on-funny-depiep

Now it has changed again. I'm not sure it's any improvement. I have now set it back to the original version, pending agreement about the best presentation. I suggest we leave it as it is while we are discussing it here. 86.146.105.118 (talk) 02:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

‌’ ' is the worst solution of all, the only one which I will not accept. Compared to bracket and ellipsis, it may misleadingly suggest that ’ ' is a form of apostrophe, not just two different glyphs pushed to one box because someone is unwilling to accept that typographic apostrophe is the most important apostrophe. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:31, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

When I looked at the top of this box before it was reset, I saw a larger apostrophe with a caption, and underneath that a couple of less large apostrophes with captions, suggesting some sort of hierarchical relationship, like the examples underneath were special kinds of the apostrophe given above. It was a little confusing because the one labelled letter apostrophe looked the same as (or very similar to) the large apostrophe; I wondered whether the difference was masked by my fonts, or whether the difference was just semantic. Perhaps if this box is intended as a summary or illustration it might be better to display them with context, such as: don’t, don't, cʼh. Just an idea. Vadmium (talk, contribs) 04:22, 19 February 2012 (UTC).

Nope. Boxes serve for a presentation (preferably a text presentation, to allow copying), but not for context. A dynamic IP's desire to wipe out variants but classical (a.k.a. typographic) and ASCII (a.k.a. typewriter) apparently based on the fact that only these two are interesting for him/her, see e.g. this edit, which obviously has nothing to do with Wikipedia's goals and policy. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:56, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

U+2019 ’

So, this code point is shared between typographic apostrophe and right single quote? If there is no dedicated character for a (punctuational) apostrophe, then the problem of presentation is really complex. I missed this point when made my variants of infobox. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:46, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

"The apostrophe is different from the closing single quotation mark" - Both U+2019. This should be clarified or omitted --92.192.57.123 (talk) 15:38, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

IM, it is named U+2019 ’ right single quotation mark (HTML: ’ ’). But since this page is about apostrophe, the quotation mark aspect does not need to be in the infobox is it? It's double use of U+2019 could well be described in the text. Finally, isn't it the font-designers freedom & job to design a pure apostrophe glyph (and a typographic apostropohe that is by definition) for U+0027 ' apostrophe? Is there any need to differentiate between "apostrophe" and "typographic apostrophe"? -DePiep (talk) 18:17, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

It does appear that the "correct" appearance for the thing called an "apostrophe" is U+2019 in most fonts. Searches of typewritten text that predates typewriters shows the curly form used almost exclusively. It may be unfortunate that Unicode decided to share a code point for apostrophe and single close quote, but their decision does not change what "apostrophe", the subject of this article, means. Instead the reuse is a fact that can be mentioned in the text, nowhere near the top. Font designers cannot use U+0027 for a correct apostrophe, as that value is also used for left single quotes and the correct apostrophe would look wrong there. I think the correct appearance of the box is to use U+2019 for the main glyph, use U+0027 for "typewriter apostrophe" and get rid of "letter apostrophe" entirely.Spitzak (talk) 20:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The easy part is this: I agree that the "modifier letter apostrophe" should not be in the sidebar. It is mentioned below, in the #Unicode section, together with the "Armenian apostrophe" and such. -DePiep (talk) 07:49, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

The statement "The U+2019 (glyph) is used to show an apostrophe" is plausible, but we'll need a RS. There could be a typesetter who says: "for apostrophe, I always use U+2019", or a font design that says: "our apostrophe at U+0027 looks more like the right single quote, because ...". That would solve it. In the end, I expect both glyphs (and no more) in the sidebar. -DePiep (talk) 09:16, 6 March 2012 (UTC)