In an emacs -Q session, when you eval the below,

(message "'Hey'")

you get

’Hey’
"’Hey’"

Note the difference here:

This is what I get when I do "C-u C-x =" on the first single quote in the
message form:

             position: 206 of 208 (99%), column: 14
            character: ' (displayed as ') (codepoint 39, #o47, #x27)
    preferred charset: ascii (ASCII (ISO646 IRV))
code point in charset: 0x27
               script: latin
               syntax: ' which means: prefix
             category: .:Base, a:ASCII, l:Latin, r:Roman
             to input: type "C-x 8 RET 27" or "C-x 8 RET APOSTROPHE"
          buffer code: #x27
            file code: #x27 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
              display: by this font (glyph code)
    xft:-unknown-DejaVu Sans
Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-13-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#x0A)

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: APOSTROPHE
  old-name: APOSTROPHE-QUOTE
  general-category: Po (Punctuation, Other)
  decomposition: (39) (''')

There are text properties here:
  face                 font-lock-string-face
  fontified            nil


This is what I get when I do "C-u C-x =" on the first single quote in the
*Messages* buffer (C-h e):

             position: 67 of 338 (20%), column: 0
            character: ’ (displayed as ’) (codepoint 8217, #o20031, #x2019)
    preferred charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0x2019
               script: symbol
               syntax: . which means: punctuation
             category: .:Base, c:Chinese, h:Korean, j:Japanese
             to input: type "C-x 8 RET 2019" or "C-x 8 RET RIGHT SINGLE
QUOTATION MARK"
          buffer code: #xE2 #x80 #x99
            file code: #xE2 #x80 #x99 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
              display: by this font (glyph code)
    xft:-unknown-DejaVu Sans
Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-13-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#x6C1)

Character code properties: customize what to show
  name: RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
  old-name: SINGLE COMMA QUOTATION MARK
  general-category: Pf (Punctuation, Final quote)
  decomposition: (8217) ('’')

I believe emacs should not be converting all APOSTROPHE characters to RIGHT
SINGLE QUOTATION MARK characters. The displayed messages look just plain
weird. To fix that, I would then need to replace all 'MSG' (apostrophe MSG
apostrophe) type message displays to `MSG' (back quote MSG apostrophe),
which is not practical.

Or, is there a defcustom I need to set to prevent this character
translation to curvy quotes?


​Question:

Why is emacs converting all single

​

--
Kaushal Modi