At the risk of being flamed, I'd like to understand why some people prefer to use a ``construction'' of accent and single quote characters rather than the "double-quote" character when quoting things?
Example:
Why do some users write quotes using ``weird'' quotes?
This is not command-line wizardry; I see this in written texts that are intended for humans to read. Here's an example I could quickly dig up.
I find this construction ugly because it's asymmetrical, and because it abuses typographical characters for a purpose they weren't meant for.
For some reason, this use of characters is mostly (exclusively?) done by Linux ((La)TeX?) users and not by the average computer user.
If the intention is to create “curly quotes” then I don't get why only the opening quote is made "curly" using the grave accent (`) -- why is a plain apostrophe used for closing quotes, rather than the acute accent (´) which would make the whole thing symmetrical?
If the intention is to create “curly quotes” then why are actual curly quotes (as created by MS Word) frowned upon? Modern computer systems handle actual curly quotes well, so it can't simply be a tradition from the Gopher days, can it?
Why are two single characters used even though the same can be achieved with a single character?
