Backtick

Article summary

The backtick is a typographical mark used mainly in computing. It is also known as backquote, grave, or grave accent. The character was designed for typewriters to add a grave accent to a (lower-case ) base letter, by overtyping it atop that letter. On early computer systems, however, this physical dead key+overtype function was rarely supported, being functionally replaced by precomposed characters. Consequently, this ASCII symbol was rarely (if ever) used in computer systems for its original aim and became repurposed in computer programming for many unrelated uses. The sign is located on the left-top of a US or UK layout keyboard, next to the key. Provision (if any) of the backtick on other keyboards varies by national keyboard layout and keyboard mapping. In layouts that use the dead key concept, the backtick key is most frequently chosen for that purpose.

Key claims

No claims recorded.

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
3. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

No sources recorded.