Historical development
The apostrophe was first used by Pietro Bembo in his edition of De Aetna (1496). It was introduced into English in the 16th century in imitation of French practice.
French practice See more

The shape of the apostrophe originated in manuscript writing, as a point with a downwards tail curving clockwise. This form was inherited by … See more

In its Unicode Standard (version 13.0), the Unicode Consortium describes three characters that represent apostrophe:
• U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE: The typewriter or ASCII … See more

• Apologetic apostrophe – use of apostrophe in Modern Scots orthography, marking the absence of a consonant in a Standard English … See more

As a mark of elision
In many languages, especially European languages, the apostrophe is used to indicate the See more

Formally, the symbol used to represent a foot of length, depth, or height, is ′ (prime) and that for the inch is ″ (double prime). (Thus, for example, the notation 5′ 7″ signifies 5 feet and … See more

In modern computing practice, Unicode is the standard and default method for character encoding. However, Unicode itself and many See more