Which apostrophe character should I use
From LING073
Many languages use an apostrophe-like character.
The problem this presents is that the traditional apostrophe (like what we use in English) is a punctuation character. It works okay for saying something's "elided" (like in something's), but it's not appropriate to represent a segment (like glottal stop in Tongan), super-segment (like aspiration in Nivkh or ejective status in Navajo), or modifier (like in Uzbek). There are special characters for this.
Here are some common apostrophe-like characters:
symbol | name | codepoint | use for what |
---|---|---|---|
' | apostrophe | U0027 | misc |
` | backtick | U0060 | |
ʻ | turned comma / ʻokina | U02BB | glottal stop (in Polynesian languages) also used for Uzbek oʻ, gʻ, etc. |
ʼ | U02BC | glottal stops, aspiration, etc. | |
‘ | U2018 | start quote | |
’ | U2019 | end quote |