' (disambiguation) explained

The character is represented by 39 in ASCII and in Unicode. It is used as:

• Apostrophe (as straight version of the character), a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark
• Single quotation mark (as straight version of the and characters)

Informal use

Being supplied as standard on many keyboard layouts, it is often used in informal contexts to replace other similar looking characters that include:

Diacritical marks

• Acute accent, a diacritic used in many modern written languages
• Geresh, a sign in Hebrew writing
• Apex, a diacritic used to indicate a long vowel

Modifier letter punctuation

• Modifier letter apostrophe, a glyph used primarily to represent various glottal sounds.
• Modifier letter left half ring, a character used to transliterate the letter ayin, representing the sound ʕ
• Modifier letter right half ring

Other uses as accents, pronunciation, or stress

• ʻOkina, a unicameral consonant letter
• Saltillo (linguistics) (or), a glottal stop consonant, ʔ
• Spiritus lenis
• Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word
• Ejective consonant, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet

Units of measure

• Prime (symbol), used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, the sciences, linguistics, and music
  • Foot (unit), a unit of length in the imperial and US customary systems of measurement
  • Minute, a unit of time
  • Minute of arc, a unit of arc

See also

• Apostrophe (disambiguation)
• Comma, a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages