Practice shows that if a dash or quotation marks is the first thing that is studied when there is interest in “typography” (and in fact, to a competent set of text), then the correct use of the apostrophe, the minutes and seconds signs, and the accent mark causes for some reason difficulties. In fact, everything is very simple, and the article will be quite short. Everything that will be discussed below refers to the modern Russian tradition of typography.

Strokes on the keyboard

On a standard PC-keyboard, there are three characters with strokes: "'" and "" "on the button along with the Russian" e ", as well as" `" on the peripheral button with the letter "e."

None of these characters is used in normal, competent typing. However, it is impossible to deny the importance of the characters "'" and "" "in the programming and layout of HTML, which we will not do.

'	U + 0027	apostrophe	This character is really called "APOSTROPHE" in Unicode, is there because it has historically been ASCII. The Unicode standard specifically emphasizes that the symbol U + 0027 has a wide use, and the actual character of the apostrophe should be another sign, which will be discussed below.
"	U + 0022	quotation mark	Just "quote", "QUOTATION MARK". It is widely used, but other characters are recommended as text quotes themselves, which will also be discussed below.
`	U + 0060	gravis	Gravis is used to emphasize vowels in some European languages: French (déjà vu), Italian (virtù), Portuguese, Welsh (mg), and others. Thus, the gravis is absolutely not used in modern Russian, and also has no relation to apostrophes or quotes.

Errors in the interpretation of these signs are quite common. In the “Living Typography”, the symbol ““ ”is confused with the sign of the second (which I will also discuss below), in some of the benefits, the gravis is called the reverse apostrophe, and so on.
')
I propose to call in Russian "'" a standard or typewritten apostrophe, "" "- a standard or typewritten quote, and" `", as it should, a gravis.

Correct quotes

I wrote about quotes in the article Making quotes on websites , but it will be useful to remind once again, more detailed.

"	U + 00AB	opening Christmas tree quotation	Here they are, real, correct, traditional quotes, Christmas trees. This is how the basic quotes in the Russian-language text set should look like. They should not fight off spaces from the text that they surround.
"	U + 00BB	closing Christmas tree quotation
„	U + 201E	opening quotes foot	And these are the real traditional quotes of the second pattern, "paws". This is exactly what nested quotes should look like in a Russian-language text set. They also do not beat off spaces from the text surrounded by them. It so happened that the quotes-paws borrowed from the German typography, and Unicode was based on the American typography. Therefore, in Unicode, our opening quote is simply “double bottom of nines” (because the commas are downward and look like two digits 9), and our closing quote is on the contrary called “double opening”.
“	U + 201C	closing quotes foot
'	U + 2018	opening Marrow quotation mark	"Marrow" - this is perhaps jargon. Correctly these quotes are called English single. These quotes are used only in philology, where they were introduced in the first half of the 20th century by academician N. Ya. Marr . They are used to denote a word, the meaning of a word or its origin (“from the Latin appellatio 'message'”, “with the word 'village' does not lean”). You can find Marrow quotes in any meaningful dictionary, but an ordinary person (not a philologist) does not need to use these quotes, because there is no need. In a sense, these are highly specialized signs.
'	U + 2019	closing Marrow quotation mark

I propose to call quotes either by drawing (quotes-Christmas trees, quotes-paws, Marrovsky quotes), or collectively “traditional quotes” to distinguish them from the standard (typewritten) quotes that we have on the keyboard.

It is worth mentioning that in Verdana font in MS Windows (including in version 5.01), the closing quote-pad (it also opens a double English quote) has an incorrect pattern (the strokes are turned down, not up), so do not be alarmed.

Apostrophe

'

U + 2019

apostrophe

It seems we just saw it? Bingo! For the apostrophe, Unicode recommends using the same character that is an English single closing quotation mark (it is also the closing Marrow quotation mark).

In Russian, the apostrophe is rarely used. Basically - in foreign names, where the apostrophe stands in the native language: D'Artagnan, Sarah O'Connor, and so on. Now the use of an apostrophe is increasing with the accumulation of foreign words and names that are not transcribed into Russian: “Intel processor”, “drop e-mail”. Previously, such use was considered wrong, but the norm of the language has changed before our eyes, and now such use is permissible.

I propose to call this apostrophe a traditional apostrophe, in contrast to the standard (typewritten) apostrophe. The traditional apostrophe is included in a number of "typographic" keyboard layouts and is available for dialing with the AltGr key.

It is probably worth mentioning that in Unicode there is also an apostrophe-letter (U + 02BC), which has the semantics of a letter, and not a spelling mark. The apostrophe is used as a letter in some languages, but it has nothing to do with Russian.

Accent mark

´

U + 0301

accent akut

The stress mark is used to distinguish the words “worth” and “worth”, “big” and “most”, “already” and “already”, and so on. Of course, an acute should be put only in the case when differences are possible. In other words, this will be more like a children's alphabet. The stress mark is naturally placed on the shock letter. The character U + 0301 when typing is placed after the vowel, which is stressed, like any other combining Unicode character.

As many, probably, managed to notice, the Verdana font from Microsoft is not friendly with an acute one, placing it above the next, and not above the previous character. I do not know if there is a similar problem in MacOS or * nix. Let's hope that she will die with time.

Generally speaking, the problem is solved by updating the font to version 5.01 , Verdana of this version correctly handles diacritics. To update, you can download the European Union Expansion Font Update , which brings Verdana to version 5.01 and solves the problem in Windows XP and Vista. Also give a link to download a separate font Verdana 5.01 in TTF format .

Minutes and seconds (they are also feet and inches)

′	U + 2032	single stroke	A single bar is used to indicate angular minutes, and a double bar is used to indicate seconds (for example, 59 ° 57 ′ 00 ″). Let me remind you that in such a record the signs of degree, minutes and seconds are not beaten off by spaces from the preceding number, but are beaten off by the subsequent spine from the subsequent & thinsp ;.
″	U + 2033	double stroke

In English typography, the same characters are used to refer to feet and inches (5 ′ 10 ″ tall), but in Russian tradition this is not accepted. Now we can often see in the advertisement the designation “19 ″ monitor” instead of “19-inch monitor”. More precisely, we see how instead of the inch sign (double stroke) a standard quote is used: “19” monitor. ”This is completely wrong.

Perhaps due to the penetration of computer technology into modern life and general globalization, single and double strokes will take root as cuts for feet and inches in close typing, but in ordinary texts I recommend writing the words "foot" and "inch" completely.