LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

About this character

U+2018, the left single quotation mark, is a typographic character used to open a quotation within a quotation, as in ‘He said, “Hello.”’ Unlike its vertical typewriter predecessor, this curled glyph is designed to match the surrounding font’s x-height and italic angle, improving readability in polished prose. Its origin traces to manuscript culture, where inverted commas indicated cited speech. In programming, it appears in Unicode-aware code as an apostrophe alternative, though most languages require the straight ASCII quote for string delimiters. In design and typesetting, paired with U+2019, it ensures proper punctuation hierarchy, particularly in British English, which favors single quotes for primary quotations.

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