The ‘ Symbol: Everything You Need to Know About the Left Single Quotation Mark
The ‘ (Left Single Quotation Mark) is a typographic punctuation mark used primarily to open a quotation within a quotation or, in some regional styles, to enclose standard dialogue. Unlike the straight typewriter quote, this curly or "smart" quote curls upward and resembles a tiny number six. In the Unicode standard, it is designated as U+2018 and sits directly inside the General Punctuation block.
Before the digital age, traditional printing presses used uniquely cast metal pieces for opening and closing quotes to give printed text a polished, legible look. Typewriters later replaced these distinct marks with a single, multipurpose straight quote to save limited keyboard space. Modern word processors eventually brought the curly ‘ mark back into our daily lives through "smart quotes" features, which automatically replace straight quotes with their curly counterparts based on the context of the sentence. Printers and editors often refer to it as a "6-quote" because the ink-heavy bulb sits at the bottom, curving upward into a tail.
In American English typography, the ‘ symbol generally opens nested quotes, such as when a character speaks inside another character's dialogue. In British publishing, it routinely serves as the primary quotation mark for all speech. While authors and editors love its elegant curve, programmers actively dodge it. Code compilers and interpreters typically reject the U+2018 character, strictly requiring the standard straight quote (U+0027) for strings and character variables. Copy-pasting code from a nicely formatted blog post into a code editor often results in frustrating syntax errors specifically because of these hidden smart quotes.
In math and science, users sometimes mistakenly type the left single quote when denoting measurements like feet or arcminutes. The technically correct character for those scientific applications is the prime symbol (′). On social media platforms and messaging apps, you rarely have to think about typing it. Mobile keyboards quietly swap it in behind the scenes to make your tweets and texts look more professionally typeset.
If you need to type the left single quote manually, your operating system has you covered. On a Mac, press Option + ]. For Windows users, hold down the Alt key and type 0145 on the numeric keypad. Web developers can perfectly render it on web pages using the HTML entity ‘.
It is easy to mix up the left single quotation mark with its structural partner, the Right Single Quotation Mark (’) U+2019. The right quote curves the opposite way—like a tiny number nine—and also functions as the standard typographic apostrophe. Other close relatives include the ubiquitous Straight Single Quote (') U+0027 and the heavier Left Double Quotation Mark (“) U+201C.