’

See also: ' [U+0027 APOSTROPHE], ʼ [U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE], ʹ [U+02B9 MODIFIER LETTER PRIME], ′ [U+2032 PRIME], ᾿ [U+1FBF GREEK PSILI], and ᾽ [U+1FBD GREEK KORONIS]

’ U+2019, ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK ← ‘ [U+2018] General Punctuation ‚ → [U+201A]

Translingual

Alternative forms

• '
• (transliterated Cyrillic): ′

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Punctuation mark

’

1. Used as a quotation mark in some languages.
   1. ‘ ’
   2. ’ ‘
   3. ’ ’
   4. ‚ ’
   5. ‛ ’
2. (in transliterated Cyrillic text) Transliteration of the soft sign (ь), indicating palatalization of preceding consonants.
3. (in transliterated Arabic and Hebrew text) Transliteration of the glottal stop (hamza).
4. A glottal stop in the orthography of numerous languages of America, Africa, and formerly the Pacific. In most Polynesian languages, the convention has shifted to the okina <ʻ>.
5. (informal) A substitute for the diacritic ʼ used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for ejective and other glottalized consonants.

See also

Punctuation

• apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
• braces ( { } )
• brackets ( [ ] )
• colon ( : )
• comma ( , )

• dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
• ellipsis ( … )
• exclamation mark ( ! )
• fraction slash ( ⁄ )
• guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )

• hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
• interpunct ( · )
• interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
• parentheses ( ( ) )
• period (US) or full stop (Britain) ( . )

• question mark ( ? )
• quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
• quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )

• semicolon ( ; )
• slash (US) or stroke (Britain) ( / )
• space (   )

quotation marks and quotation dashes in all languages (edit)

• Afrikaans: “ ”, ‘ ’, „ ”, ‚ ’
• Albanian: „ “, ‘ ’
• Arabic: « », “ ”
• Armenian: « »
• Azerbaijani: « », ‹ ›, “ ”, " ", ‘ ’, ' '
• Basque: « », ‹ ›, “ ”, ‘ ’
• Belarusian: « », “ ”
• Bulgarian: „ “, ’ ’, ‘ ’, « », ’ ’, ‘ ’, —
• Catalan: « », “ ”, ‘ ’
• Chinese: “ ”, ‘ ’, 「 」, 『 』
• Czech: „ “, ‚ ‘, » «, › ‹
• Danish: » «, „ “, › ‹, ‚ ’, ” ”, ’ ’
• Dutch: ‘ ’, “ ”, ‚ ’, „ ”
• English U.K.: ' ', " ", ‘ ’, “ ”
• English U.S.: " ", ' ', “ ”, ‘ ’
• Esperanto: “ ”, ‘ ’, —
• Estonian: „ “, « »
• Filipino: “ ”, ‘ ’
• Finnish: ” ”, ’ ’, » »
• French: « », ‹ ›, “ ”, —
• Georgian: „ “, ‚ ‘, » «, › ‹
• German: „ “, ‚ ‘   ;   » «, › ‹   ;   regional: « », ‹ ›
• Greek: « », “ ”, —
• Hungarian: „ ”, » «, —
• Icelandic: „ “, ‚ ‘
• Indonesian: “ ”, ‘ ’

• Interlingua: “ ”, ‘ ’
• Irish: “ ”, ‘ ’
• Italian: « », ‹ ›, ‟ ”, ‛ ’
• Japanese: 「 」, 『 』, 〝 〟, 〝 〞
• Korean: “ ”, ‘ ’, 『 』, 「 」
• Latvian: « », „ “
• Lithuanian: « », „ “
• Lower Sorbian: „ “, ‚ ‘
• Macedonian: „ “, ’ ‘
• Northern Kurdish: « »
• Norwegian: « », „ “, ‘ ’, ‚ ‘
• Persian: « »
• Polish: „ ”, « », » «, —
• Portuguese: “ ”, ‘ ’, « », —
• Romanian: „ ”, « », —
• Russian: « », „ “, „ ”, —
• Serbo-Croatian: „ ”, ” ”, ‘ ’, ’ ’, „ “, » «
• Slovak: „ “, ‚ ‘, » «, › ‹
• Slovene: „ “, ‚ ‘, » «, › ‹
• Spanish: « », “ ”, ‘ ’, —
• Swedish: ” ”, ’ ’, » », » «, ’ ’, —
• Thai: “ ”, ‘ ’
• Turkish: “ ”, ‘ ’, « », › ‹, —
• Ukrainian: « », „ ”, ‚ ‘
• Vietnamese: “ ”, —
• Welsh: ‘ ’, “ ”

quotation marks - all matched-pairs

• Curved double quotation marks: “ ”, ” ”, „ ”, „ “, ‟ ”
• Curved single quotation marks: ‘ ’, ’ ’, ‚ ’, ‚ ‘, ’ ‘, ‛ ’
• Straight double quotation marks: " "
• Straight single quotation marks: ' '

• Guillemets: « », » «, » »
• Single guillemets: ‹ ›, › ‹
• Corner brackets: 「 」, 『 』
• Prime quotation marks: 〝 〟, 〝 〞

quotation marks and quotation dashes - all single characters

• Curved double quotation marks: “, ”, „, ‟
• Curved single quotation marks and apostrophes: ‘, ’, ‚, ‛
• Straight double quotation mark: "
• Straight single quotation mark and apostrophe: '
• Prime quotation marks: 〝, 〞, 〟

• Guillemets: «, »
• Single guillemets: ‹, ›
• Corner brackets: 「, 」, 『, 』
• Quotation dashes: — (em dash), ― (horizontal bar), – (en dash)

Further reading

• ’ on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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English

Symbol

’

1. Indicating a possessive, with s (’s).
2. Indicating the omission of letters.

   tho’, they’ll, ’65, ’ospital

Usage notes

• When indicating a possessive and omission of letters, this symbol is called an apostrophe.

Belarusian

Symbol

’ • (ʺ)

1. Indicating the non-palatalization of the preceding consonant before a soft vowel.

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Finnish

Symbol

’

1. Indicates a syllable break in words, mostly as a result of consonant gradation.

   liu’uttaa

2. Used to separate the inflectional ending from foreign loanwords when they are used as-is.
3. Used at the end of words to signify dropping of final sounds, mostly occurs in poetic speech.

Usage notes

This symbol is often replaced with the ASCII apostrophe ' for technical reasons.

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German

Symbol

’

1. Indicating the omission of letters.
   • In case of enclitic pronouns: wenn es → wenn’s, gibt es → gibt’s
   • (sometimes proscribed) In case of merging of prepositions and articles: auf dem → auf’m
   • In case of omission of e in the present indicative: ich gehe → ich geh’, wir/sie gehen → wir/sie geh’n
   • (sometimes proscribed) In case of the omission of e in the imperative singular: gehe du → geh’ du
   • (archaic) In case of the omission of e in the imperative plural: gehet ihr → geh’t ihr
   • (archaic) In case of the omission of e in the past participle: entdecket → entdeck’t, bezeuget → bezeug’t
   • (archaic) In case of the omission of e in the genitive case: Gottes → Gott’s, Königes → König’s

Usage notes

• In many cases where letters are omitted, there are also spellings without an apostrophes (e.g. wenns, aufm, gehn, geh, geht, entdeckt).

Macedonian

Symbol

’ • (’)

1. A symbol placed before a syllabic р (r) at the beginning of a word: ’рт, ’рѓа, ’рбет, ’рмба etc.
2. A symbol used to denote the schwa sound in some dialectal words: к’смет.

See also

• ´ (´)
• ` (`)

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Ukrainian

Symbol

’ • (ʺ)

1. Indicates the non-palatalization of the preceding consonant before a soft vowel.
2. Represents the apostrophe in names transliterated from the Roman alphabet, for example Кот-д’Івуар (Côte d’Ivoire).