Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 2, 2026

Right single quotation mark

The Unicode character ’ is used for both a typographic apostrophe and a single right (closing) quotation mark. This is due to the many computer fonts and character sets that unified the characters into a single code point, and the difficulty of software distinguishing which character is intended by a user's typing.

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Jun 2, 2026
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’
Right single quotation mark
U+2019 ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

The Unicode character ’ (U+2019 right single quotation mark) is used for both a typographic apostrophe and a single right (closing) quotation mark.1 This is due to the many computer fonts and character sets (such as CP1252) that unified the characters into a single code point, and the difficulty of software distinguishing which character is intended by a user's typing.2

The straight apostrophe ' (the "ASCII apostrophe", U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE) is even more ambiguous, as it could also be intended as a left or right quotation mark, or a prime symbol.

See also

See also

References

References

  1. "Unicode 13.0.0 final names list". Unicode Consortium. 2020. Archived from the original on 2013-12-17. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  2. Kuhn, Markus (11 December 2007). "ASCII and Unicode quotation marks". University Computing Service, the University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 3 October 2020. Retrieved 25 September 2020.