Recently while [browsing the internet](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html) I found something that caught my attention, quotes written \`\`like this''. A `backtick` used as the opening mark, and `apostrophe` to close it. After some [investigation](https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html) it turned out this odd style of writing is an accidental artifact that traces back to the typewriter days.

On typewriters, the `backtick` symbol was added as a "dead key" to unlock the possibility to add *grave accents* to lower-case letters, like this, `à`. Many typewriters were designed with the `backtick` and `apostrophe` symbols mirrored of each other. This made them suitable to open and close quotations respectively. Although this way of writing quotes has never been considered typographically correct it sneaked into fonts of early computer-systems.

Just like the typewriters some early fonts had the `backtick` and `apostrophe` displayed mirrored of each other. Many embraced this way of quoting, most notably this style was found in the documentation of many UNIX-like systems. Eventually all fonts started to adhere to new and more modern standards which were not based on the restrictions of typewriters. This resulted in "correct" rendering of these two characters across systems thus creating the accidental characteristic look that today hides a tiny bit of computer history.

Jens Lind

2023