Re: Why backquotes in GNU documentation?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <87oc6mprwj.fsf@thumper.dhh.gt.org>,
 John Hasler <jhasler@newsguy.com> wrote:

> Dave writes:
> >     GNU `make'
> 
> > Now, I was wondering what could be the reason behind this convention.
> > Why not use just straight quotes also in front of the quoted word?
> 
> It's an attempt to emulate proper left and right single quotation marks
> in ASCII.  I don't like it.

Neither do I.  The problem is that in most computer fonts, ` and ' are 
not mirror images of each other.  ` is angled, but ' is usually vertical.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
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