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Is the backtick character ("`") used outside of computing in English? If so, what for?

Golden Cuy
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    Some will regard \`` as the proper way to open a quote to be closed with'`. – A.Ellett May 30 '15 at 04:45
  • Also, if you're typesetting your document using LaTeX (used in mathematics and other fields of science, but not limited to the sciences), then to get the correct quotation marks for opening a quote you definitely need either \`` or``` to be closed with either ' or '' respectively. " is not used for quotation marks in LaTeX. For examples you might want to start by looking at this entry on quotation marks from the TeX.SE site – A.Ellett May 30 '15 at 04:51
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    The answer is 'no'. I've never seen a backtick in any work of English literature. – Tushar Raj May 30 '15 at 05:31
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    @A.Ellett But only in ASCII. An actual single open quote is a different glyph. – David Richerby May 30 '15 at 11:16
  • beautiful question. – Fattie May 30 '15 at 11:52
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    Understand that the common US computer keyboard is derived from the old Teletype ASR-33 keyboard, the most common input-output device for early computers, and the "mother" of the ASCII character set. There were only 94 total character values available, so the last 6 or so were allocated rather arbitrarily (by engineers, not linguists). The "backquote" was picked partially to permit poor-man's "accents", and partially to pair with the "forward" single quote character. What key combinations modern "word processors" use to evoke "extended characters" is up to those programs. – Hot Licks May 30 '15 at 21:57
  • It depends what you mean by "outside of computing": Wikipedia mentions it's used in word processing and text editing to enter accented characters or for quotation marks; does that count as computing? It was formerly used on typewriters for many of the same purposes. The usual transliteration of the Arabic letter ʿayn is very similar, and a backtick can be used for that, although a better system will use a distinct character; whether that counts as computing is again up to you. – Stuart F Feb 16 '22 at 13:00

1 Answers1

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No, it's not.

The backtick, or the backquote, evolved as a separate character exclusively for computer use. (Wikipedia)

It is actually a grave accent, used in combination with a letter in many languages, but not English, except sometimes to indicate pronunciation.

From wikipedia:

The grave accent, although not commonly applied to any English words, is sometimes used in poetry and song lyrics to indicate that a vowel usually silent is to be pronounced, in order to fit the rhythm or meter

...It can also be used in this capacity to distinguish certain pairs of identically spelled words like the past tense of learn, learned /ˈlɜrnd/, from the adjective learnèd /ˈlɜrn.ɨd/ (for example, "a very learnèd man").

EDIT: As Steven noted in the comments, loanwords which use grave accents often retain them in English.

Accents, sometimes combined with italics, are often applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been fully assimilated into English: for example, vis-à-vis, résumé, pièce de résistance and crème brûlée.

Community
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Tushar Raj
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  • Haven't you ever eaten pie à la mode? Or chicken à la king? – Steven Littman May 30 '15 at 09:33
  • @StevenLittman: Okay, loanwords do retain them, I guess. And I'm craving ice-cream now! – Tushar Raj May 30 '15 at 09:34
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    @Joe: Get real. It's been ten years since Nature reported that Wikipedia was as reliable as Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it's almost certainly better than that today (it'll certainly cover far more ground, in more different languages). – FumbleFingers May 30 '15 at 20:34
  • The ` character is only a grave accent when it is attached to a letter: it is the letter that provides the context in which an accent is used. Otherwise the backtick/backquote is a separate character, regardless of the fact that it looks identical to a grave accent. – Erik Kowal May 31 '15 at 05:46
  • The backslash has a similar history, invented for computing and now the bane of customer support everywhere. I hate having to say forward slash much like I hate having to say email inbox; it reminds me of my age. – choster Jun 04 '15 at 17:52
  • @choster: Heard the one about 'Press ANY key'? Reminds me of that. I really think it should be common knowledge that slash means forward slash. Just like 1 means +1. – Tushar Raj Jun 04 '15 at 17:54