[stavros]

tcmb used ‚comma-apostrophe‘. nsxwolf asked "Is ,comma-backtick` some personal quirk of yours, or is it some standard I'm not aware of?"

I'm pointing out that nsxwolf was wrong to ask about comma-backtick, because tcmb used comma-apostrophe.

[roryokane]

Both are wrong. tcmb didn’t use ‚comma-apostrophe’ – they opened with , U+201A SINGLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK (not U+002C COMMA) and closed with ‘ U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (otherwise known as an open single quotation mark).

This matches the German convention described on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#German.

[godelski]

Sorry I was quoting nsxwolf. But now that you point it out, I can see the difference. It's subtle so I'll copy paste so others can see.

tcmb: ‚usename‘

nsxwolf: ,comma-backtick`

stavros: ‚comma-apostrophe‘

godelski: ,comma-apostrophe'

Though while copy pasting I see tcmb and stavros as having the same character which is different from the longer character you pasted. Seems my clipboard doesn't like that character. I also seem to have crashed OSX's emoji and symbol tray. No longer pops up if I press the button (bottom left) or select from firefox but got it back by opening safari.

Fuck man, I do not envy you people working on ligatures. Or timezones. I'm always impressed by these random rabbitholes and complexities in things that always look very simple. It's beautiful in a weird way.

[crazygringo]

Wow this is like the most HN thread I've ever seen, I love it! It's almost like a punctuation version of "Who's on first?"

Everybody's arguing, then finally all is revealed, and I learned a ton of stuff along the way about German quotation marks and the subtle difference between backticks and opening curly quotes, and low quotation marks and commas, in the Verdana font!

(If this had been a serif font with actual curly quotes the differences would have been much more obvious...)