‘16-apostrophe’?

The symbols for feet and inches are not “curved” or “curly.” They can be vertical — as from an old-school typewriter, ' and " — or they can be slanted — as with the prime symbol ′ and double prime symbol ″ in mathematics — but not curved.
» Prime symbol at Wikipedia
» Example: Proper usage

Typewriters used to have just ' and " and that was fine for listing my height as 5'6". But with Word or WordPerfect in the 1990s, word processors began to offer the curly quotes, which were rendered on the screen and in print as true open-and-close single quotes and open-and-close quotation marks:
    ‘ ’ single quotes and
    “ ” quotation marks.
(Note. Those single quotes and quotation marks are rendered as different characters when I load this page on my phone, but they appear to be the same characters when I load this page on my laptop. YMMV, I guess.)

So with those innovative word processing programs in the ’90s, if you hit ' and a letter, the ' became an open single quote, ‘; if you hit ' at the end of an alpha-numeric string and then the spacebar, the ' became a close single quote, ’. Similarly, If you hit " and a letter, the " became an open quotation mark, “; if you hit " at the end of an alpha-numeric string and then the spacebar, the " became a close quotation mark”. I loved having those “true” open-and-close single- and double-quotes.

But just as auto-correct and auto-complete don’t always guess correctly what we mean when texting, so also these so-called smart-quotes aren’t always invoked correctly. This post is an example of using the wrong symbol: the height of this overpass is 16' or 16′: 16 feet. I’m sorry, but this is not a proper use of the apostrophe. (Just another example of apostrophe-abuse; don’t get me started on “its” vs. “it’s.”)
» Proper symbol to denote a measurement in feet

Another instance in which “smart” software gets it wrong?
When you refer to a decade like the 1990s without the “19” part, what should it be? Well, apostrophe is the mark that replaces stuff that’s missing (as in contractions, right?), so it should be an apostrophe, ’90s. But remember what happens when you use ' and then a letter or number? Yes, you get ‘90s and that’s not correct. Human intervention required to override the not-quite-all-knowing software.

While it’s tempting to invoke Mrs. Slocombe and say that I am unanimous in this rant, it turns out I am not a lone voice in the grammatical wilderness: “While an apostrophe is now often used in place of the prime, and a double quote in place of the double prime (due to the lack of prime symbols on everyday writing keyboards), such substitutions are not considered appropriate in formal materials or in typesetting.” —Wikipedia

[Steps off soap box]

Looking back
  1 year ago: “Mulching done for another year”
2 years ago: “It’ll be 13 weeks Monday…”
3 years ago: “Before I throw it away [Filler]”
4 years ago: “Foodie day!”
5 years ago: “Bear Lake, Idaho”
6 years ago: “Richard”
7 years ago: “Roland”
8 years ago: “Not what I expected!”
9 years ago: “Spring fishfly”
10 years ago: “Chester”
11 years ago: “Memorial Day”

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30th May 2022 30th May 22