History Main / PunctuationShaker

* In Turkish, an apostrophe will often be used to separate proper nouns from affixed morphemes, ''e.g.'' "William'la" ("with William") or "İstanbul'da" ("in Istanbul"; cf. a common noun like "depoda" -- "in the store")

* In 2017 Kazakhstan began a switch from a Cyrillic-based alphabet to a Latin-based one. The president has explicitly aimed to avoid "hooks or superfluous dots" (in other words, á é í ó ú and whatnot) when devising the alphabet, instead preferring to use apostrophes. This decision [[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/asia/kazakhstan-alphabet-nursultan-nazarbayev.html has been roundly criticized]], and a second revision saw the president give up and just use said hooks and superfluous dots.

* Written Scots, especially in older works, or by writers who don't speak Scots as a first language, is frequently littered with apostrophes, which represent letters that would be there in English. This frequently annoys fluent Scots speakers, because it encourages the idea that Scots is just English with an accent. Yes, many Scottish accents drop "T"s, but the word "no" as in "He'd no agree tae that" is a Scots word that's ''meant'' to be pronounced like that.

** In ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' 90's continuity, Mon-El was worshiped by most of the galaxy for founding most of the PlanetsOfHats the Legionnaires came from back in the twentieth century. In order to avoid getting crazy reactions wherever he went, he changed his costume slightly and took the codename M'onel.

** There's also the zat'nik'tel StunGuns, pronounced "zat-nick-a-tell" with the second apostrophe representing an entire ''syllable''. Fortunately, they're usually just abbreviated to "zat-guns" or "zats".

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* Romanized transliterations of Semitic words and names will usually put in an apostrophe for one of a glottal stop, a pharyngealized sound (sometimes the symbol for this is a reversed apostrophe, ‘ instead of ’), or a schwa sound that doesn't merit a real vowel. ''e.g.'' The Hebrew newspaper ''Ha'aretz'' (glottal stop), the letter ‘ayin (pharyngeal), or the word ''b'nai'' (meaning "children of", featuring a schwa). [[Literature/TheQuran The Islamic holy book]] is normally translated as the Quran/Koran in English (without an apostrophe), but the correct transliteration is ''Qur'an'', incorporating an 'ayn (not a glottal stop like in Modern Hebrew, but an actual pharyngeal).

* Romanized transliterations of Semitic words and names will usually put in an apostrophe for one of a glottal stop, a pharyngealized sound (sometimes the symbol for this is a reversed apostrophe, ‘ instead of ’), or a schwa sound that doesn't merit a real vowel. ''e.g.'' The Hebrew newspaper ''Ha'aretz'' (glottal stop), the letter ‘ayin (pharyngeal), or the word ''b'nai'' (meaning "children of", featuring a schwa).

* ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'': The prototype clone of Kyo Kusanagi produced by NESTS is known as K'.

* Famously among copy editors, ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'''s [[https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis official style guide]] is to use a diaeresis to punctuate repeated vowels, as in "coöperate" and "reëlect", to indicate the second vowel is pronounced separately. Pretty much no other publisher follows the idiosyncratic tradition, although some have been known to use a hyphen as in "co-operate." (Mocked in a Website/ClickHole [[https://clickhole.com/going-rogue-the-new-yorker-has-announced-that-they-r-1841068853/ article]] which satirically suggests the New Yorker is going to double down and use a HeavyMetalUmlaut over every vowel.)

* ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'' has a case that's grounded in reality. The protagonist, a Native American, is named Ratonhnhaké:ton. This is a name based on the Kanien'kéha aka Mohawk language, and the punctuation shaker comes as a result of transcription methods doing this to a lot of First Nation languages. In the story, he's given the name Connor by his mentor Achilles both because of the issues between colonials and natives, and so others can refer to him easily without needing to figure out another language.

** D'Vana (an Orion) and T'Ana (a Caitian) have an apostrophe in their names.
** Discussed by Ensign Tendi and Ensign Mariner in "Envoys."

'''Mariner''': Maybe it's just 'cause Klingon names sound the same? Like, they all have an apostrophe for some reason.\\

* ''Fanfic/MyImmortal'' has a few, including [[MarySue Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way]] and B'loody Mary Smith, who's supposed to be Hermione.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'', a few members of the High Entia race use apostrophes in their names, such as the [=NPCs=] Ma'crish and Vol'aren, but most of them don't. Crossing this with NameFromAnotherSpecies, Ma'crish has a reluctant [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter Nopon]] companion that she named Nopo'rikh.

* ''ComicBook/TheGreatPowerOfChninkel'': Chninkel names all seem to be built like this. There's Jo'n, G'wel, Ar'th, N'om, and many others. Since the one true god O'ne also has a name like this, it's likely a reference to Jewish names ending in -el (Michiel, Ezekiel, etc.) meaning "of God". O'ne seems to have a particular interest in the Chninkel above all other races.

** The series has names like T'lan Imass, Onos T'oolan, and so on... It's worth noting that the apostrophe in T'lan Imass does represent a glottal stop, is actually mentioned in-universe as a contraction of "Tellann" and is meant to signify that something is broken. Onos T'oolan used to go without the apostrophe before becoming {{undead}}.

** An example is the convention formed naturally on this site (there are no official translations) for Romanizing names from Creator/NickPerumov's works like ''Literature/DiamondSwordWoodenSword''. The name of the empire and world Mel'in is read as "Mel Yin", with "Mel"'s ending "l" pronounced a la French.
* In English accents are frequently dropped, except in a handful of loanwords and even then only occasionally (résumé, fiancé/fiancée; the latter is doubly bad as some people do not distinguish between the two gendered forms), even when they actually matter. "Learned," the past tense of the verb learn, is different from learnéd, which is an adjective meaning "knowledgeable".
** For the pedants, ALT + 0233 to type é.
** In British English, the past tense is generally "learnt."

* Creator/BlizzardEntertainment makes use of this a lot, something commented on by lead story dev, Creator/ChrisMetzen. The ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' series tends to give them to evil characters such as Gul'dan, Ner'zhul, and Kel'thuzad. Kel'thuzad is particularly jarring, considering that was his name when he was still a regular human wizard [[AerithAndBob with no explanation]]. And ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' has [[{{Precursors}} the Xel'Naga]].

* Creator/JoeHaldeman wrote "A !Tangled Web", a short story involving a race called the !Tang.

* The hilariously SoBadItsGood fanfic ''Fanfic/ThomasJoshmanAndTheMirrorOfDreams'' takes this trope UpToEleven with Professor Imsto-Arpeu +=E) Fcreeb. [[note]]Perhaps his name was designed to break [[https://xkcd.com/327/ poorly-sanitized databases.]][[/note]]

** Most languages with distinct click consonants go into this very much into UpToEleven levels. (Largely because languages with click consonants are possibly even ''less'' suited for transcription in Roman alphabets than some First Nations and Caucasian languages that have consonants and vowels never dreamt of in Europe.) And there are MULTIPLE types of click consonants; !Kung actually has one of the larger inventories of distinct click consonants in a language.

* As noted above (in the VGM example for ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'') a ''lot'' of Roman transcription systems for First Nations languages tend to descend into this (largely because a lot of First Nations languages plain don't have sounds or distinctions in sounds that lend well to Roman letters). Mohawk is among the ''less'' problematic languages (with JUST having diacritics for nasal vowels, retroflex consonants, glottal stops and vowel length and tone); Nuxalk and other Salishan languages can turn this UpToEleven (then again, these languages also have some of the higher numbers of consonants documented in a language).

%%* ''VideoGame/BattleForWesnoth'' has quite a few.
%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample. Give examples of the use of this trope in there before uncommenting the entry.

%%* [[http://www.furcadia.com/community/longnames.html Longnames]] on the MMORPG ''VideoGame/{{Furcadia}}''.
%% Administrivia/WeblinksAreNotExamples. Explain how they fit.

* ''Webcomic/DaughterOfTheLilies:'' T'Fah'Nii The Clanless (pronounced Tiffany), who is a character in a book that main character Thistle is reading.

** In the 5th edition book ''Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes'' we get a good look at some Githyanki names and look at all them apostrophes! Ris'a'an, Kar'i'nas, and Zetch'r'r are all actual names that appear in the book.