Editing Backtick (section)

{{Short description|Typographical mark (`) (Freestanding grave accent)}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2023}}
{{Infobox symbol|mark=`
|name=Backtick
|unicode={{unichar|0060|grave accent}} (symbol)
|see also={{unichar|0300|cwith=◌|combining grave accent|nlink=Grave accent}} (diacritic)
}}
The '''backtick''' {{char|'''`'''}} 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{{efn|Upper case letters would require the character to be printed higher on the page}}) base letter, by overtyping it atop that letter.<ref>{{Cite web |first=Markus |last=Kuhn |url=https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/apostrophe.html |title=Apostrophe and acute accent confusion |quote=This key is on German typewriters a non-spacing key (DIN 2137). It does not advance the cursor, but causes the next character to appear below the accent |publisher=Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge}}</ref> On early computer systems, however, this physical [[dead key]]+overtype function was rarely supported, being functionally replaced by [[precomposed character]]s.{{efn|In [[ISO/IEC 8859-1]] ("ISO Latin 1") and subsequently in [[Unicode]].}} Consequently, this ASCII symbol was rarely (if ever) used in computer systems for its original aim and became repurposed for many unrelated uses in computer programming.

The sign is located on the left-top of a US or UK layout keyboard, next to the {{keypress|1}} key. Provision (if any) of the backtick on other keyboards varies by national [[keyboard layout]] and [[keyboard mapping]].