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by rmccue 1756 days ago
The use of `` and '' comes from the typewriter days. You’ll see it particularly with professional authors who have been writing for print since then.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_accent#As_surrogate_of_a...

US QWERTY keyboards like the author is almost certainly using have the backtick above the Tab key, shared with ~, and it’s commonly used in programming.