Another take on the English apostrophe in Unicode

[Kalvesmaki, Joel]

I don’t have a particular position staked out. But to this discussion should be added the very interesting work done by Zwicky and Pullum arguing that the apostrophe is the 27th letter of the Latin alphabet. Neither U+2019 nor U+02BC would satisfy that position. See:

Zwicky and Pullum 1983 Zwicky, Arnold M., and Geoffrey K. Pullum. "Cliticization vs. Inflection: English N’T."Language59, no. 3 (1983): 502–513.

It’s nicely summarized and discussed here:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/03/22/being-an-apostrophe/

jk
--
Joel Kalvesmaki
Editor in Byzantine Studies
Dumbarton Oaks
202 339 6435