Apostrophe

' 
Apostrophe
U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE
U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
'
Typewriter apostrophe or neutral single quote Punctuation apostrophe or typographic right single quote

The apostrophe (' or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for three basic purposes:

It is also used in a few distinctive cases for the marking of plurals, e.g. "p's and q's" or Oakland A's.

It is also used informally to indicate the units of foot, minutes of time, and minutes of arc, although in these uses, the prime symbol is generally preferred.

The word "apostrophe" comes ultimately from Greek ἡ ἀπόστροφος [προσῳδία] (hē apóstrophos [prosōidía], '[the accent of] turning away or elision'), through Latin and French.[1][2]

  1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary
  2. ^ Allen, W. S. (1987). Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 100, note 13. The English form apostrophe is due to its adoption via French and its current pronunciation as four syllables is due to a confusion with the rhetorical device apostrophé