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Typically, grave accents and apostrophes are treated specially in
documentation strings and diagnostic messages, and translate to matching
single quotation marks (also called “curved quotes”). For example,
the documentation string "Alias for `foo'." and the function call
(message "Alias for `foo'.")
both translate to "Alias for
‘foo’.". Less commonly, Emacs displays grave accents and apostrophes
as themselves, or as apostrophes only (e.g., "Alias for 'foo'.").
Documentation strings and message formats should be written so that
they display well with any of these styles. For example, the
documentation string "Alias for 'foo'." is probably not what you
want, as it can display as "Alias for ’foo’.", an unusual style in
English.
Sometimes you may need to display a grave accent or apostrophe
without translation, regardless of text quoting style. In a
documentation string, you can do this with escapes. For example, in
the documentation string "\\=`(a ,(sin 0)) ==> (a 0.0)" the grave
accent is intended to denote Lisp code, so it is escaped and displays
as itself regardless of quoting style. In a call to message
or
error
, you can avoid translation by using a format "%s"
with an argument that is a call to format
. For example,
(message "%s" (format "`(a ,(sin %S)) ==> (a %S)" x (sin x)))
displays a message that starts with grave accent regardless of text
quoting style.
The value of this user option is a symbol that specifies the style Emacs should use for single quotes in the wording of help and messages. If the option's value is
curve
, the style is ‘like this’ with curved single quotes. If the value isstraight
, the style is 'like this' with straight apostrophes. If the value isgrave
, quotes are not translated and the style is `like this' with grave accent and apostrophe, the standard style before Emacs version 25. The default valuenil
acts likecurve
if curved single quotes seem to be displayable, and likegrave
otherwise.This option is useful on platforms that have problems with curved quotes. You can customize it freely according to your personal preference.