APOSTROPHE CATASTROPHE

Nearly ten years ago I offered a post called "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" listing some of the mistakes in English I found jarring at the time. (And I still do.) But now here's something new that torques my muffin: Using the wrong single quote to stand in for an apostrophe at the beginning of a word.

For instance, the graphic for a live assemblage of MSNBC hosts says:

    MSNBCLIVE ‘25

Presumably, the ‘25 is meant to be a contraction of 2025, so that the five can rhyme with live without getting a couple extra syllables in the way. If that's the case, the graphic should read:

    MSNBCLIVE ’25
    
Hardly noticeable, I know, but doing it the first way is simply wrong. A left single quote is not an apostrophe. And now that I'm tuned to it, I see cases of this mistake all over the place. (And now you will, too.) It's especially annoying in big posters using odd character sets.
    
MS Word (as well as LibreOffice, which is what I use to write books) thinks that a single quote at the front of a word like 'til or 'bout is the beginning of a quoted word. The program doesn't seem to mind that you've failed to complete the task by putting another single quote at the end, like 'til' or 'bout'.

(I once used an old DOS word processor that had a grammar check feature that would flag problems like unpaired quote marks.)

If, on the other hand, you construct your works in HTML, you know you have to include the proper tag: ’

If you insist on using smart quotes (aka curly quotes) in your work, you'll need to trick your word processor to get it right.

Calling up an apostrophe in Word, etc., is a no-brainer in the cases you normally use an apostrophe: contractions like can't or won't or don't. The program selects the correct mark: a right single quote.

The program appears to believe the apostrophe is the end quote of a single quoted word, but is not disturbed that the front-end quote is missing.

So, how do you fix this? How can you force your word processor to do the right thing?

Having a character directly in front of the quote mark causes the program to select the proper smart quote: the right-side quote.

Which means, to get the correct mark at the beginning of a word, you first have to place a phantom character in front of the quote, then delete it later.

One way is to get into the habit of typing xx in front of an apostrophe, then using a universal deletion at the end of the day, taking out all cases of xx. But to be sure you're not introducing errors by removing a sneaky instance of xx you need to keep, you'd have to curate each deletion. The nuclear option, Replace All, would be unavailable, for safety's sake.

Sounds tedious.

How 'bout this: use as your throw-away character something closer to the quote key (in qwerty, at least) that is unlikely to come up naturally: [[ or ]] or [].

That way, [['bout becomes 'bout, along with the others, and you'll have the luxury of clicking Replace All.

Or: Take each case as it comes up and nail the apostrophe before moving on.

Or: Avoid front-end apostrophes. Use till in stead of 'til, and so forth.

Of course, you could also do everything in straight quotes (the way I write these blog posts), but I'd be against that. I like the look of smart quotes in e-books. Makes the words look like printed text.

Same for right-margin justification. This blog (like most Internet text) uses a ragged right margin.

But I've read comments by readers that say they don't like ragged right margins in e-books—makes them look amateurish. Some folks claim they would refuse to read a book that didn't have right-side justification.

Sounds petty to me, not to mention it limits your selection of entertainment.

(Like avoiding movies in black-and-white. Or refusing to watch animated TV shows because you think all cartoons are for kids.)

The very real problem of right-side justification in an e-book is that in a large size font things get all wonky. Enhanced typesetting, available from Kindle Create, yields automatic hyphenation, which goes a long way to fixing the problem.

The other Kindle e-book problem is the dash. I don't use em dashes, but sometimes I try to get away with en dashes, surrounded by spaces. (I used to like non-breaking spaces. Not sure how Kindle Create handles those guys.)

Probably better to eliminate all dashes in e-books. Get your kicks in the paperback version, where all things are allowed—because all things are fixable before dumping the manuscript into a PDF file prior to POD.

But I digress.