I don't think that usage is described in the ASCII standard; as far as I can tell it is only in that RFC.
And it leads to really ugly text nowadays, such as in http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/4439727.htm Mark __________________________________ http://www.macchiato.com ► “Eppur si muove” ◄ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marco Cimarosti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Stefan Persson'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "David Starner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 03:10 Subject: RE: Header Reply-To > Stefan Persson wrote: > > > > Why doesn't that page follow the ASCII standard and/or > > any ASCII-based > > > > standard? > > > > > > What? As far as I can tell, it's 100% ASCII. > > > > It doesn't follow the ASCII standard as far as quotation marks are > > concerned. > > Using ` and ' as quotation marks is a long-standing Internet convention. See > RFC #20, October 1969 (sic!): > > http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc20.html > > "4.2 Graphic Characters > [...] > 2/7 ' Apostrophe (Closing Single Quotation Mark Acute Accent [2]) > [...] > 6/0 ` Grave Accent [2,3] (Opening Single Quotation Mark) > [...] > 2 The use of the symbols in 2/2, 2/7, 2/12, 5/14, /6/0, and 7/14 as > diacritical marks is described in Appendix A, A5.2 > [...]" > > RCF #20 contains no Appendix A, so I guess that this usage is described in > the ASCII standard itself. > > _ Marco > >
