@enf Did you ever research the origin story of the backtick?
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Replying to @mwichary
From the ASCII perspective (yes) or from the general concept of the opening single quotation mark (no)?
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The basic story is that CCITT rightly decided (Oct 29-31, 1963) that the grave accent was necessary. July 1964 ISO draft is emphatic that it is only an accent mark, not defined if used in isolation https://archive.org/details/enf-ascii-1964/page/n34 …pic.twitter.com/nzT61M0UTa
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Which must have been in reaction to a US attempt to define it as an opening quotation mark, but as far as I can tell that wordsmithing does not actually appear in the US draft until September, 1964 https://archive.org/details/enf-ascii-1964/page/n50 …pic.twitter.com/7VZurUbWeW
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Replying to @enf
So it’s sort of like underscore? Starting as a dead/additive key (physically or conceptually) and then becoming its own independent thing?
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Replying to @enf
That’s super interesting. Are there any computers outside of PLATO that actually supported on-screen overprinting? (Was Compose ever universal?)
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Replying to @mwichary
I just got both the Plato book and Track Changes by the way
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Let me know what you think!
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