'
Apostrophe
- Unicode
- U+0027
- Category
- Punctuation
- Symbol Sets
- Quotation Marks
- HTML Entity
- '
- CSS
- \0027
The apostrophe (') is the straight single quote of the typewriter. It marks contractions and possession (don't, Anna's), doubles as a single quotation mark, and is often typed for feet and minutes (6' tall). Typeset text uses the curly ’ instead, which is both the closing single quote and the correct typographic apostrophe, and the prime ′ for feet; Word, Google Docs and phones usually turn ' into ’ automatically.
On US and UK keyboards the apostrophe has its own key: right of the semicolon on US keyboards, left of Enter (shared with @) on UK PC keyboards; a British Mac keeps the US position. On the US-International layout it is a dead key for accents: press it, then Space. To keep a straight ' in Word, press Ctrl+Z right after it has been curled. On iPhone it is on the 123 page, on Android on the ?123 page.
On US and UK keyboards the apostrophe has its own key: right of the semicolon on US keyboards, left of Enter (shared with @) on UK PC keyboards; a British Mac keeps the US position. On the US-International layout it is a dead key for accents: press it, then Space. To keep a straight ' in Word, press Ctrl+Z right after it has been curled. On iPhone it is on the 123 page, on Android on the ?123 page.
How to Type
- Windows
- ' key · Alt+39
- macOS
- ' key
- Linux
- ' key · Ctrl+Shift+U 27
- HTML
- ' or '
In Programming
Single quotes delimit strings in Python, JavaScript, PHP and SQL; in Bash and PHP they are literal, with no variable expansion, and in C, Java and Rust they mark a single character ('a'). SQL doubles a quote inside a string ('it''s'), and unescaped quotes in user input are the classic route to SQL injection. Rust also writes lifetimes with it ('a). A curly ’ pasted into code is not a quote character at all.
Tags
apostrophe
single quote
straight apostrophe
apostrophe vs single quote
alt 39
feet symbol
keyboard symbol
punctuation
ascii