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The apostrophe (' or ’) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for three basic purposes:
Little punctuation marks—like a comma, question mark, or an apostrophe—can make or break the flow or meaning of a sentence. In fact, this is how confusing life would be without proper punctuation.
Apostrophe, quotation marks: foot (unit), Inch, Minute, Second? Question mark: Inverted question mark, Interrobang “ ” " " ‘ ’ ' ' Quotation marks: Apostrophe, Ditto, Guillemets, Prime: Inch, Second ® Registered trademark symbol: Trademark symbol ※ Reference mark: Asterisk, Dagger: Footnote ¤ Scarab (non-Unicode name) ('Scarab' is ...
Some sources distinguish "diacritical marks" (marks upon standard letters in the A–Z 26-letter alphabet) from "special characters" (letters not marked but radically modified from the standard 26-letter alphabet) such as Old English and Icelandic eth (Ð, ð) and thorn (uppercase Þ, lowercase þ), and ligatures such as Latin and Anglo-Saxon Æ (minuscule: æ), and German eszett (ß; final ...
An apostrophe is an exclamatory figure of speech. [1] It occurs when a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes absent from the scene. Often the addressee is a personified abstract quality or inanimate object.
For example, to represent the string eat 'hot' dogs in Pascal one uses 'eat ''hot'' dogs'. Other languages use an escape character, often the backslash, as in 'eat \'hot\' dogs'. In the TeX typesetting program, left double quotes are produced by typing two back-ticks (``) and right double quotes by typing two apostrophes ('').
Punctuation in the English language helps the reader to understand a sentence through visual means other than just the letters of the alphabet. [1] English punctuation has two complementary aspects: phonological punctuation, linked to how the sentence can be read aloud, particularly to pausing; [2] and grammatical punctuation, linked to the structure of the sentence. [3]
For example, curved quotes and apostrophes were all collapsed into two characters (' and "). The hyphen, minus sign, and dashes of various widths have been collapsed into a single character (-), sometimes repeated to represent a long dash.