The modifier letter apostrophe () is a letter found in

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

encoding, used primarily for various glottal sounds. It was used for the

apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...

in early Unicode versions.

Encoding

The letter apostrophe is encoded at , which is in the ''Spacing Modifier Letters'' Unicode block. In Unicode code charts it looks identical to the , but this is not true for all fonts. The primary difference between the letter apostrophe and U+2019 is that the letter apostrophe U+02BC has the Unicode General Category "Letter, modifier" (Lm), while U+2019 has the category "Punctuation, Final quote" (Pf).

Use

In early Unicode (versions 1.0–2.1.9) U+02BC was preferred for the punctuation apostrophe in English. Since version 3.0.0, however, U+2019 is preferred due to vast amounts of existing text written in character sets that unified the apostrophe and the single close quote characters. This does make searching for words with apostrophes in them somewhat harder. In the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

, it is used to express

ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a Airstream mechanism#Glottalic initiation, glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with Aspirat ...

s, such as and . It denotes a

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

in orthographies of many languages, such as Nenets (in Cyrillic script) and the artificial

Klingon language The Klingon language (, ''Klingon scripts, '': , ) is the constructed language spoken by a fictional alien race called the Klingons in the ''Star Trek'' universe. Described in the 1985 book ''The Klingon Dictionary'' by Marc Okrand and delibe ...

. In one version of the Kildin Sami alphabet, it denotes preaspiration. In the

Ukrainian alphabet The Ukrainian alphabet () is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillic script. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th ...

and in the

Belarusian alphabet The Belarusian alphabet is based on the Cyrillic script and is derived from the alphabet of Old Church Slavonic. It has existed in its modern form since 1918 and has 32 letters. See also Belarusian Latin alphabet and Belarusian Arabic alphabet. ...

, U+02BC is used for the semi-letter 'apostrophe' (which plays a role similar to Russian ) in certain contexts, such as, for example, in

internationalized domain name An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacrit ...

s where a punctuation mark would be disallowed. In Bodo and Dogri written in

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...

, it marks high tone and low-rising tone on short vowels, respectively.

References

{{Latin script Punctuation