I've seen this usage a few times in older books. If the symbol is encoded as an apostrophe, this probably is a simple oversight, or because it was seen as a straight apostrophe and "curlified" automatically. Encoding it correctly (with the turned comma aka open single quote, or the more obscure modifier letter turned comma) would not resolve your issue with finding/not finding the author name, which I think should be done by amending the metadata with variant spellings and if applicable pseudonyms of authors. I normally try to provide add such information in my submissions. Jeroen. Quoting Paul Flo Williams <paul@frixxon.co.uk>:
Seeing the latest posting of "The Invasion of India", apparently by a "J. W. M'Crindle" (#66388), I wonder why his name is rendered with an apostrophe, instead of either the turned comma (open single quote) or a simple "c". His name was John Watson McCrindle (1825-1913), and the Internet Archive version of the book clearly shows that the turned comma is used for his name, the normal printer's approximation of the superscript "c".
Using the apostrophe like this means that "The Invasion of India" isn't found when searching for McCrindle, even though his other book on PG, "The Commerce of the Navigation of the Erythræan Sea" is correctly attributed.
There's a very good essay by Michael Collins about this: http://greenbag.org/v12n3/v12n3_collins.pdf
Regards, Paul _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d Unsubscribe: https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/options/gutvol-d