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Hello Astron,

Le 10/02/2014 23:23, Stefan Knorr a écrit :

I think your look at this problem is very much informed by your being
French and by your own professional perspective.
My mother tongue, German, for instance uses far fewer apostrophes,
especially in formal writing, as apostrophes most often appear in
informal contractions (geht's = does it go, hast's = have you got it,
...). I would suppose that my apostrophe-to-single-quote ratio in all
my German writing is around three to one. In academic writing
especially, with its rigid quoting requirements the ratio in German
(and maybe even in English) will actually tip in favour of the single
quotes.
Similarly, Angloamerican publishers of fiction very often use single
quotes in place of all regular quotes. (Of course, they do have the
advantage that their closing typographic quote mark looks the same as
an apostrophe, I think.)

I can't give actual numbers for French but a hard guess would be around
100 to 1. The apostrophe comes everytime the article "Le" (mascusline)
or "La" (feminine) is placed in front of a noun or adjective that starts
with a vowel. And there are plenty of these ;)


Well, sorry to tell you, but straight quotes aren't actually good for
much. They are at least not the correct character to use for angle
seconds [1] or inches.

Yes, you're right. But this is the current use FR writers find to that
character. Of course, the Insert > Special chars menu option is there
for that.

-- 
Jean-Francois Nifenecker, Bordeaux

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