[Feature] Use smart apostrophes and smart quotes in legal code #297
Labels
💻 aspect: code
Concerns the software code in the repository
📄 aspect: text
Concerns the textual material in the repository
✨ goal: improvement
Improvement to an existing feature
🟩 priority: low
Low priority and doesn't need to be rushed
🚧 status: blocked
Blocked & therefore, not ready for work
Projects
Problem
According to the Unicode Standard 15.0.0, “2019 ’ is preferred for apostrophe”. The standard also says, "preferred characters in English for paired quotation marks are 2018 ‘ & 2019 ’".
U+2019
(’
) is sometimes called the “smart apostrophe”, andU+201C
(“
) andU+201D
(”
) are sometimes called “smart quotes”. Similarly,U+0027
('
) is sometimes called the “ASCII apostrophe”, andU+0022
("
) is sometimes called the “ASCII quotation mark”.The English legal code for the current legal tools is inconsistent. In the licenses, ASCII apostrophes and ASCII quotation marks are almost always used. The only exception is the text above the “Creative Commons … International Public License” heading. The HTML versions of that text use smart apostrophes and smart quotes, but the plain text versions of that text use ASCII apostrophes and ASCII quotation marks.
In CC0, ASCII apostrophes and ASCII quotation marks are always used.
Description
Always use smart apostrophes and smart quotes. This would make the legal code consistent with itself and consistent with The Unicode Standard.
Alternatives
Always use ASCII apostrophes and ASCII quotation marks. This would make the legal code consistent with itself but wouldn’t make the legal code consistent with the Unicode standard. Additionally, ASCII quotation marks are very slightly harder to read than smart quotes since opening ones and closing ones look the same.
Implementation
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