[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: luS

[Lieven L. Litaer]

On 5/23/2019 12:13 PM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
>> You have weird apostrophes there. I suggest simple ' or fancy ’, but
>> never ‘.

Am 23.05.2019 um 19:56 schrieb SuStel:
> I can't help myself:
>
> What difference does it make?

Okay, since you asked, I'd like to elaborate. But first, of course,
anyone can write the way they want, I don't want to convince anyone of
writing any specificic way. I'm also not going to be ironic or cynical
or so, only explanining my opinion, but also listing some neutral but
clear facts.

First: Yes, indeed, the apostrophe is just a little piece of a small
line, and written by hand it doesn't make a difference if it's a
straight line or a curved one. Also on small screens, nobody will see a
difference between ‘ and ’ and '.

What I address here is not about Klingon, it's about typesetting, i.e.
writing on computers and screens.

First, this ‘ or ’ is NOT an apostrophe, it's a single quotation mark in
the first place. It's somewhat similar to doing "this" or “that”, but
just ‘single’.

But, there's a big "but" here: Graphic designers prefer to use a
so-called typographic apostrophe, which looks identical to the right
single quotation mark  (and also uses the same symbol), i.e. it
resembles a small nine. This has been used in TKD, KGT, TKW, and many
other sources - including Okrand who uses it in his mails. It can be
written on windows computers by holding down the Alt-key + 0146, HTML
uses the code #8217.

The apostrophe is the RIGHT single quotation mark, but not the left one.
It doesn't only look very ugly when you read a text like {QI‘tu’ ‘och
vI’el‘a’} where the quotes jump back and forth, but it's also just the
wrong symbol.

That's the difference it makes.

--
Lieven L. Litaer
aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
http://www.klingonisch.de
http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Apostrophe