What is 'the right way' to insert an apostrophe at the start of a word?

Questions
,
1

What is ‘the right way’ to insert an apostrophe at the start of a word?
For instance, in the sentence “The year '26 just started”, or the family name of this gentleman, typst will turn the apostrophe into an opening quote.
I could insert an apostrophe, e.g., as:

#let apostrophe = "\u{2019}"
#{apostrophe}t Hooft

but this feels clunky for something that should be easy.

1 Like
2

That unicode character is named #sym.quote.r.single (see General Symbols – Typst Documentation).
It can be used directly in text like this:

The name #sym.quote.r.single;t Hooft starts with an apostrophe

But that’s annoying to type (note the ; between the symbol name and the t).

A more convenient way is to set up a show rule to apply this automatically:

The name 't Hooft starts with an apostrophe

#show "'t H": [#sym.quote.r.single;t H]

The name 't Hooft starts with an apostrophe

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3 Likes
3

I’d recommend "'t Hooft", if using show rules, to prevent false positives.

4

Do Windows and the various flavours of Linux not have an easy was of entering it? On the Mac it is Alt+]; do the other OSes not have equivalents?

:slight_smile:
Mark

5

This is probably another instance of this issue: Smartquote incorrectly renders quote direction · Issue #7615 · typst/typst · GitHub

6

X11 and Wayland supports Compose key, but for some reason the default sequences are described in share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose. With compose = "${bat}/bin/bat ${xorg.libX11}/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose"; alias in NixOS, I can quickly find the necessary stuff, or you can configure a custom file where you add your own compose sequences. For ’ it’s:

<Multi_key> <greater> <apostrophe>  : "’" U2019 # RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
<Multi_key> <apostrophe> <greater>  : "’" U2019 # RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK

So, Compose key then (' then > or > then '). Compose key is selected in the OS settings under keyboard/input.

7

Thanks. I was merely asking as a matter of information. I’m on Mac* so I use the Mac key-combo regularly, but was interested to know why the OP needed to ask his question and why the various much more convoluted solutions were needed.

* If Apple continues to produce bug-ridden versions of the OS like MacOS 26, I might jump ship to Linux at some point!

:slight_smile:
Mark

1 Like
8

Thanks everyone!
I try to use “US international with altgr deadkeys” as much as I can so ‘ is alt+9 and ’ is alt+0. I just never needed those symbols, and they are not in my muscle memory, but this seems a good time to start doing that.

I guess I’ve seen to many computers with CP 1252 to sleep well using characters after \u{FF} in a language that wouldn’t need it per se…

For Dutch text ('m, 'n, 's and 't) and years without century, this should do the trick:

#show regex("'(\d\d|[mnst])\b"): it => {
  show "'": [#sym.quote.r.single]
  it
}
9

The idiomatic way would be:

#show regex("'(\\d{2}|[mnst])\\b"): it => {
  show "'": sym.quote.r.single
  it
}

Or better yet:

#show regex("'(\\d{2}|[mnst])\\b"): it => sym.quote.r.single + it.text.slice(1)

See https://typst.app/docs/reference/foundations/regex/#constructor-regex.