Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation?

Richard Kettlewell <[email protected]> Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:10:26 +0000
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.utils
Organization Anjou
Message-ID <87pqr2r50t.fsf__35544.1459724263$1297194102$gmane$org@araminta.anjou.terraraq.org.uk>
Dave <[email protected]> writes:

> Now, I was wondering what could be the reason behind this convention.
> Why not use just straight quotes also in front of the quoted word? For
> example:
>
> 	Using 'htonl' is necessary so that
>
> or:
>
> 	Using "htonl" is necessary so that

Some fonts have the apostrophe represented by, approximately speaking,
the mirror image of the grave accent.  In that case `htonl' looks like
it has balanced quotes.

These days ‘single’ and “double” quotes are available in Unicode.

-- 
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