Could somebody tell me which is the correct symbol to use for apostrophe.
The HTML special characters entity set has apos #x27 where apos
presumably stands for apostrophe - this is the straight up single quote
mark which XML defines and uses for special purposes.
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on-line tells me:
"The omission of one or more letters in a word.
A sign (') used to indicate the omission of one or more letters or
numerals (as in can't, o'er, 'cello; spirit of '76 (i.e. 1776)), or in
marking the possessive case (man's, boys')."
So SOED appears to use apos. Do they know, or just confused? Or could
it be a UK/US difference?
(I've always used the keyboard ' for XML use and apos when I want the
apostrophe in text.)
Wikipedia tells me:
"The apostrophe is different from the closing single quotation mark
(usually rendered identically but serving a quite different purpose),
and from the similar-looking prime (which is used to indicate
measurement in feet or arcminutes, and for various mathematical purposes)."
So Wiki tells me use rsquo #x2019 (#8217) which looks like an
apostrophe, and not to use apos or prime (#x2032)
but also:
"The prime symbol should not be confused with the apostrophe, single
quotation mark, acute accent or grave accent."
Jacques Foucry wrote:
> On 25 janv. 2010, at 17:30, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
> Hello,
>
>> #3 is the fastest to type. #2 and #4 are ugly to read when editing the .xml file using text file. How about solution #1
>
> In my source document I use the single quote (#4). In my custom stylesheet I change them by the curly quote (#1).
>
> <xsl:param name="singlequote">
> <xsl:text>'</xsl:text>
> </xsl:param>
> <xsl:param name="curlyquote">
> <xsl:text>’</xsl:text>
> </xsl:param>
>
> <xsl:template match="d:para/text() | d:title/text()">
> <xsl:value-of select="translate(.,$singlequote,$curlyquote)"/>
> </xsl:template>
>
> I do not change for <computeroutput> or <litteral> tags.
>
> Jacques
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Ron Catterall Ph.D. D.Sc.
http://catterall.net
