Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2006 17:51:47 -0500 (EST)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Eats, Shoots & Leaves....
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Eric Jablow <ejablow at cox.net> wrote:

> You need to join the Apostrophe Protection Society.
> See its web site, http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/.

There should also be an ASCII Apostrophe Protection Society.  The
humble apostrophe is a perfectly good ASCII character.  As are
the quote mark and the hyphen.  But plenty of websites, newsgroup
postings, emails, etc., use a plethora of mutually incompatible
non-ASCII variants, which may look like anything at all or like
nothing at all, depending on the software they're produced with,
the software they're processed with, and the software they're viewed
with.  Microsoft is a major offender here, but hardly the only one.

I recently ran into a website that said, "Because of formatting
problems, quotation marks will appear as stars."  At least people
are starting to recognize that there's a problem.