alt Hacker NewsCan't that be handled by the typesetting/rendering software and displayed appropriately regardless of which specific character was typed?
Can't that be handled by the typesetting/rendering software and displayed appropriately regardless of which specific character was typed?
No, because it's missing semantic information carried by the distinction. The ’ at the beginning of
is not a left quote ‘ but an apostrophe ’, like the apostrophe in “can’t”; but ‘tis certainly possible that someone might want to put single quotes around a phrase beginning with the word “tis”, such as the Latin ‘tis misereri’. By contrast to “can’t”, the ‘ in “Hawai’i” is the ’okina used to represent the glottal-stop sound in the Hawai’ian language, not an apostrophe.