Apostrophes changed for ever by a word-processing quirk?

Not that I'm normally quite this picky, but ...

If you've ever tried typing something like:

Let ‘em go!

... in your average word-processing program, you probably won’t end up with an apostrophe in front of em.

Why? Because most keyboards don’t distinguish between an apostrophe, or closing quotation mark, (’) and an opening quotation mark (‘). As a result, your word-processor has to decide what it is you wanted to type.

You don’t normally find an apostrophe in front of em, so it reasonably assumes that you were after an opening quotation mark.

You weren’t, though. You were looking for an apostrophe. The trouble is that so many people have got so used to accepting their word-processor’s decision as final, that they seem to have forgotten (or come no longer to care) what an apostrophe is.

The word-processor induced usage seems to have become so widespread as to be generally accepted. Normally, I don’t mind. Really I don’t. But it hit home to me when it appeared on some TV ad or other recently, which had something like:

The class of ‘96

I still wouldn’t really mind, but even my (now pretty ancient) word-processing program can work that one out and automatically makes it:

The class of ’96