Which way hangs the apostrophe's tail?
« previous post | next post »
Or does it even have a tail?
Facebook post by David J. Loftus:
Let me tell you flat out that, as much as possible, I do not slant a typed apostrophe rightward or leftward, nor do I give it a tail or hook, but I do so when writing them by hand. Where it gets tricky is when "smart" machines add these elaborations when I don't want them. Though I may stubbornly try to type ', ', ', etc., the machine often wins and insists on adding a frill.
I realize that I am on shaky ground here, but there is at least one other punctuation mark that looks like an apostrophe. That's the closing single quotation mark, also known as a curly apostrophe or typesetter's apostrophe. There are still other punctuation marks that look like the apostrophe, but it would be tedious to list them all, and probably impossible to print them here. Moreover, these marks are technically different in Unicode, but often appear identical in certain fonts or, as one user on Quora noted, are substituted due to keyboard limitations.
When handwriting, one may vary the marks as one pleases, but when typing, at least for me, it is usually easier just to stick to the humble '. Only a copy editor or a typographer could set them all straight.
My late friend, Michael Carr, lived on Kaua'i for many years and passed away in Kapa'a, its largest settlement. Though I visited and stayed with him in those places, I could never get used to how to handle the "apostrophes" in them. Greatest heresy of all, though I went to Hawaii many times and published numerous books from the University of Hawai'i Press, I was always stymied by the 'okina (reversed apostrophe). In correspondence with linguists who cared about the language or representatives of the Press or other people who really cared about the name, I would at least insert good ol' '. However, when I'm communicating with people who don't have a vested interest in "Hawaiʻi" (N.B.!), I often just go for "Hawaii". For the more linguistically savvy, I'm apt to use "Hawai'i".
Selected readings
- "Jonathan Swift v. Apostrophes" (11/25/24) — the peeve lode for apostrophes, with well over a dozen entries in its bibliography, but it's mainly about whether to have them or not. What Mr. Loftus is talking about is how they should be designed and oriented.
- "Apostrophe catastrophe" (1/31/09)
- "Michael Edward Carr, lexicographer, R.I.P." (9/12/25)
[Thanks to Tim Leonard]
Daniel Barkalow said,
March 10, 2026 @ 9:20 am
Just to be extra precise, Unicode has a special character for it so that, if you double-click on ʻokina, it will select the ʻokina (in addition to the rest of the word), whereas if you double-click on ‘okina (or ’okina or 'okina), it won't. This is because the technically correct character is a letter and the others are all punctuation.
번하드 said,
March 10, 2026 @ 9:28 am
Using ` instead of ' used to be an indication that the person writing was socialized on a Commodore Amiga computer.
Just like calling the OS kernel 'kernal' pointed to Commodore 64.
Coby said,
March 10, 2026 @ 10:15 am
In MS Word, using a font such as Times New Roman, an apostrophe automatically becomes a left single quote if it follows a space and a right single quote if it follows a character.
Tim Leonard said,
March 10, 2026 @ 10:29 am
@Daniel Barkalow — Geoff Pullum argues that the apostrophe is actually a 27th letter of the alphabet: https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2013/03/21/being-an-apostrophe/
Chester Draws said,
March 10, 2026 @ 1:58 pm
Cntrl-z straight after typing an apostrophe will undo the change to a curly one. Or you can go and turn it off in the settings.
I use the control-Z a lot with Cyrillic soft signs, to distinguish them from apostrophes. So Sevastopol', for example.
Cedar said,
March 10, 2026 @ 3:20 pm
"Smart punctuation" can at least be disabled in the settings of Apple devices.
John Swindle said,
March 11, 2026 @ 12:35 am
Hawaiian is available as a keyboard layout in Windows 11. On Apple devices I more or less have to guess which little tick mark is an 'okina.
The State of Hawai’i recently got “Hawai’i” spelled correctly on car license plates by adding an ’okina that’s so tiny it doesn’t even seem to change the positions of the other letters.
Last time I checked (which was a while ago): the origin of the name “Kauai,” was unclear, as was whether it was “Kauai” or “Kaua’i.”
The State of Hawai’i recently got the ’okina added to
John Swindle said,
March 11, 2026 @ 12:38 am
And my iPad guesses didn’t seem to result in `okina in my preceding note.
ajay said,
March 11, 2026 @ 4:52 am
This confirms my hypothesis that Hawai'i is in fact made up. Checking my Tough Guide, I find:
APOSTROPHES. Few NAMES in Fantasyland are considered complete unless they are interrupted by an apostrophe somewhere in the middle (as in Gna’ash). The only names usually exempt from apostrophes, apart from those of most WIZARDS, heroes, and COMPANIONS on the Tour, are those of some COUNTRIES. No one knows the reasons for this. Nor does anyone really know how an apostrophe should be pronounced, though there are theories:
1. You ignore the apostrophe and simply pronounce the word. (Here Gna’ash = Gnash.)
2. You leave a gap or lacuna where the apostrophe occurs. (Here Gna’ash = Gna-ash.)
3. You make a kind of clucking sound to stand for the apostrophe. (Here Gna’ash =
gna(glunk)ash.)
Persons with insecurely mounted tonsils should adhere to one of the other
two theories.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 11, 2026 @ 6:03 am
it would be tedious to list them all, and probably impossible to print them here
If they're in Unicode, then it's perfectly easy to print them here. Any modern system today, even on a smartphone, is capable of Unicode.
This page (my favourite for Unicode) lists many of the similar characters with code points:
https://graphemica.com/'
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 11, 2026 @ 6:04 am
Should have been this page.
Philip Taylor said,
March 11, 2026 @ 6:31 am
"Any modern system today, even on a smartphone, is capable of Unicode" — which does not, of course, include Royal Mail's Postcode Address File format. I endeavoured to register my wife's new business venture, Maison Cà Phê (Wadebridge, Cornwall, UK) and was told :
Sigh.
Karen Lofstrom said,
March 11, 2026 @ 1:22 pm
I'm an editor. I fix other people's punctuation daily. Also, I live in Hawai‘i and speak Tongan and some Hawaiian. I speak with ‘okina every day. I do not find it cute or endearing to refuse to use proper punctuation (with the curly tails) or to mark the ‘okina as an actual consonant.
If the author were to submit his work to me for publication, I would fix it. He can do as he pleases on Facebook.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 11, 2026 @ 5:56 pm
@ Philip Taylor — I would imagine that Royal Mail have boatloads of legacy systems which are *not* modern and therefore do not support Unicode. Not to mention stuff such as OCR.
maidhc said,
March 11, 2026 @ 6:34 pm
On sfgate.com, just about every story relating to Hawai‘i has the following addendum:
Editor’s note: SFGATE recognizes the importance of diacritical marks in the Hawaiian language. We are unable to use them due to the limitations of our publishing platform.
Jonathan Smith said,
March 11, 2026 @ 11:57 pm
^ big hmm as ʻokina is literally not diacritical but literally literal
Chas Belov said,
March 12, 2026 @ 2:07 am
Apparently I'm supposed to use the modifier letter turned comma: Hawaiʻi
If you don't see a character between the two i's in Hawaiʻi, then this blog doesn't render U+02BB. If you see tofu, then the blog renders it but your font doesn't have it.
I do see the character as I type this comment.
Andreas Johansson said,
March 12, 2026 @ 3:23 am
@Jonathan Smith:
In their defense, Hawaiian orthography also uses actual diacritics (macrons for long vowels).
ajay said,
March 12, 2026 @ 4:35 am
"Also, I live in Hawai‘i and speak Tongan and some Hawaiian."
Honest question: should this not be Hawai‘ian?
Philip Taylor said,
March 12, 2026 @ 6:04 am
Is the ʻokina the only glyph that requires an instance of itself in order to spell its own name correctly ?
Peter Taylor said,
March 12, 2026 @ 1:30 pm
In Spain I commonly see people use an acute accent instead of an apostrophe when writing English.
Asdf said,
March 12, 2026 @ 1:32 pm
Don't many glyphs require instances of themselves to spell their own names?
F: ef (contains 1 ef in its English name)
Α: άλφα (contains 2 alphas in its Greek name)
etc etc
Philip Taylor said,
March 12, 2026 @ 2:23 pm
And in Britain I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen a typewriter apostrophe (') used where the more punctilious among us would use a punctuation apostrophe (’).
HS said,
March 12, 2026 @ 6:07 pm
Is the ʻokina the only glyph that requires an instance of itself in order to spell its own name correctly ?
Um, er, nearly every letter of the English alphabet, I would have thought…
"Hawai'i" [apologies for incorrectly using an apostrophe!] is cognate with Maori "Hawaiki", the mythical Maori homeland (and also I presume cognate with Savai'i, the largest of the two main islands of Samoa). The original Polynesian /k/ evolved into a glottal stop in many Polynesian languages but not in standard Maori, though glottal stops are found in some Maori dialects, e.g. in Taranaki. They are not marked in standard Maori orthography, but I have seen them represented in dialectal writing with an apostrophe (or at least an apostrophe-like symbol – I'm not sure what shape is used).
John Swindle said,
March 12, 2026 @ 9:05 pm
@ajay: Good question about the spelling of "Hawaiian." I've rarely seen it spelled with an ʻokina, probably because it's an English world and English doesn't have that letter.
Philip Taylor said,
March 13, 2026 @ 4:17 am
"Um, er, nearly every letter of the English alphabet, I would have thought…" — ah, yes, good point. General anæsthesia doesn’t contribute a great deal to one’s clarity of thought, it would seem …
Scott Rhodes said,
March 13, 2026 @ 4:24 pm
@Philip Taylor
"Is the ʻokina the only glyph that requires an instance of itself in order to spell its own name correctly ?"
There's also the háček.
Philip Taylor said,
March 14, 2026 @ 3:24 am
Yes, sorry, I clearly should not have posted that comment / question. Unfortunately I was post-TIVA when I posted, and my brain was clearly still fogged, although I did not realise that at the time.
David Marjanović said,
March 14, 2026 @ 12:10 pm
Nowadays it's an indication that the person writing is (as I've seen one call himself) a native LaTeX writer.
And yet, you consistently use an opening quote instead of a ʻokina. On this page, they look the same in the font used in the comment window, but not in the font used for published comments.
Outdone by its Slovak name, mäkčeň.
ajay said,
March 16, 2026 @ 7:04 am
Good question about the spelling of "Hawaiian." I've rarely seen it spelled with an ʻokina, probably because it's an English word and English doesn't have that letter.
In which case, loath as I am to resurrect an old argument, can one not argue that "Hawaii" is also an English word – it is the English for the Hawaiian word "Hawai‘i" – and therefore is correctly spelled without the 'okina? It's common for the English word for a country to be spelled very similarly to the native word – "Brazil/Brasil", for example. "Italy/Italia". Even identically – "France/France". And the vast majority of English usage is "Hawaii" so from a descriptive point of view it is clearly correct.
ajay said,
March 16, 2026 @ 7:07 am
Um, er, nearly every letter of the English alphabet, I would have thought
All except eye and double-you, I suppose? (How does one spell Q? Queue? Cue?)
Philip Taylor said,
March 16, 2026 @ 8:16 am
I'm not sure I would spell either as you have done, Ajay — the latter would (to my mind) be "double-u", but the former is somewhat harder (but definitely not the optical spelling). I think probably just "i".
HS said,
March 16, 2026 @ 5:38 pm
Yes, after writing that comment about "nearly every letter in the English alphabet" I realised that it is actually pretty problematic. English doesn't seem to actually have standard written forms for most of the names of the letters of the alphabet (unlike Greek, say). There are some that are pretty clear and standard – "t" is definitely "tee", "j" is definitely "jay", "z" is definitely "zed" unless you're an American or have been watching too much Sesame Street in which case it is "zee", etc. But is "f" "ef" as Asdj writes it, or "eff" as I would write it? Is "c" "cee", which contains itself, or "see", which doesn't? What are "a", "e", "i", "o", and "u"? "o" is probably "oh", but is "u" "you", which contains itself, or "yoo", which doesn't? Is "q" "queue" or "cue" or even "kyoo" or "kyu"? Is "y" "why", which contains itself, or "wai", which doesn't? Or maybe it is "wye"? Coming from a Polynesian country I might go for "wai" but I suspect most English speakers wouldn't – it's a decidedly non-English spelling. Does the name of "r" contain an "r" if you are a rhotic speaker but not if you are a non-rhotic speaker? Does "h" start with an "h" if you are a hyper-correcting Cockney? I imagine these could be serious and important questions if you are a Scrabble player…
ajay said,
March 17, 2026 @ 4:45 am
"j" is definitely "jay"
Unless you're Scottish, in which case it might be "jye"!
HS said,
March 18, 2026 @ 6:10 pm
I stand corrected. You live and learn. Och aye.
David Marjanović said,
March 19, 2026 @ 12:49 pm
Haitch is much more widespread; it appears to be standard in non-northern Ireland and in Australia.
Philip Taylor said,
March 19, 2026 @ 2:09 pm
I think (that among the educated classes at least) "haitch" is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is certainly far more prevalent in British English (including those invited to speak on BBC Radio 4) than it was in the 20th century.
HS said,
March 19, 2026 @ 7:17 pm
"it appears to be standard in non-northern Ireland and in Australia."
Yes, I'd forgotten about Irish English.
I'm dubious about it being "standard" in Australia. I'm a New Zealander, Australia is our closest neighbour, and I've never particularly noticed Australians saying "haitch" (and "haitch" is definitely non-standard in New Zealand). But a quick Google search suggests that it may in fact be on roughly equal footing in Australia with "aitch". See
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/archived/booksandarts/the-h-wars-aitch-or-haitch/7541200
Andreas Johansson said,
March 20, 2026 @ 3:42 am
Regarding the spelling of the name of Q, WP says "most commonly spelled cue, but also kew, kue, and que".
I was taught "cue" at some point, which I though was silly. But it's extremely rare I have occasion to write it out at all.
A language column in the newspaper remarked wrt Swedish that the names of the letters are unusual words in that they're quite common words but basically never spelled out, and have no definite spellings (though in many cases there's only one sensible way they could be spelled).