rock ‘n’ roll
What kind of an inverted apostrophe should be used before n? Strictly speaking, I think it should be tail pointing downwards. But for reasons of aesthetics is it okay to use the one with the tail upwards?
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T. Carer (unregistered)
December 10, 2003, 4:08pm
An apostrophe that notes ommission should always curl toward the left (tail downwards).
The similar-looking punctuation mark (curling to the right or tail upwards) would be an opening single quotation mark, which serves a different purpose.
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mpt (unregistered)
December 13, 2003, 5:52am
*Any* apostrophe should always have the tail downwards. As T. Carer said, the tail-upwards symbol is an opening quotation mark -- it isn't an apostrophe at all.
Writing " 'n' " (e.g. "rock 'n' roll" or "fish 'n' chips") with quotes instead of apostrophes is a fairly common mistake, even for people with English as their first language. Usually this is the result of word processors turning ' characters into curly quotes automatically. (They make the same mistake, for example, with " 'twas ", which is short for "it was".)
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