From: Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2000-09-17T12:32:30+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:4953] Re: Ruby Book Eng. translation editor's questions

"Hal E. Fulton" wrote:

> Nobody cares about this but me,
> but I'll comment anyway... :)
>
> The character ` is commonly referred
> to as a back-tick or back-quote (I've
> seen this with or without the hyphen).
>
> The strictly correct term, I believe,
> is grave accent (even though that is
> not the way they are "used").
>
> To call them single quotes or left-hand
> single quotes is, I think, simply
> mistaken...
>
> Hal Fulton

The grave accent is positioned on top of a vowel.  It looks
just like a back-tick, but has a very different meaning.  It
means "this is pronounced differently".  English has no
particular use for this form, so we tend to be sloppy and
confuse it with the back-tick (which stands in isolation).

Or, at least, that's my reading of the situation.