What ` means
It wraps code in chat and documents; in prose it is rarely right. The character is the grave accent on its own, the slanted stroke you see on è and à, but typed alone and shown at full size it is mostly a computer symbol, and most people call it the backtick or backquote.
Its best-known job today is marking code. In Markdown, the plain-text formatting understood by Discord, Slack, GitHub and many note apps, a word between single backticks appears in a typewriter-style font, and three backticks on their own lines open and close a code block. WhatsApp does something similar: three backticks on each side of a text make it monospace. Programmers also meet it inside languages: in JavaScript a string in backticks can span lines and embed values, as in Hello ${name}, and in Unix shells command runs the command and pastes in its output, an older spelling of (command).
Its one historical role in prose explains why it looks like a quote. In some early terminals and US computer fonts the backtick was drawn as an opening single quote, so people wrote `like this', closing with an apostrophe. The typesetting system TeX still accepts that convention. In modern fonts the two marks no longer match, so in normal writing use ‘ and ’, or a plain ' on both sides.
Why does the key give me è instead of `?
Because on many keyboards it is a dead key: press it, then Space. A dead key types nothing on its own and waits for a letter to put the accent on, which is how French, Spanish, Portuguese or Nordic keyboards produce è and à. Pressing the key and then Space releases the bare backtick.
On the US layout the backtick has a key of its own, left of 1, shared with the tilde ; on the UK PC layout that key pairs it with instead, and sits near Enter. Layouts with an Arabic, Cyrillic, Thai or East Asian alphabet on that key often need a switch to English first. If nothing works, Windows takes Alt96 on the numeric keypad, and phone keyboards usually keep it on a second symbols page.
Purely functional. In code it is an instruction; in prose it usually reads as a typo.
Swapping it for an apostrophe silently breaks Markdown and code; they look alike but are different characters.
Part of collections
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsFormatted as code: usually a command, a filename or a bit of code meant to be read exactly as typed.
Don't confuse it with
5
Related characters
2
Combination ideas
6Worth knowing
- In a number of well-known PC games the key left of 1 (on a US keyboard) opens the developer console, which is why gamers call it the tilde key even when they want the backtick.
- The name comes from Latin gravis, heavy. Ancient Greek grammarians traditionally contrasted the grave, a lower pitch, with the raised acute.
Questions people ask
3Is the backtick the same as an apostrophe?
No. They are different characters: the apostrophe ' is straight, the backtick ` leans. In code and Markdown only the backtick works as a code marker, and an apostrophe in its place breaks it.
Why is it called a grave accent?
Because it is the same shape as the accent on è and à. Grave is French for heavy; in French it marks an open e sound (père) or tells apart words like a and à.
Can I write è by typing ` and then e?
Not as plain text. ` followed by e gives two characters. Use a dead key, the accented letter itself from your keyboard, or a long-press on e on most phone keyboards.
More like this
16
Collections with `
7
How to type or find `
- Also called
- backtick · backquote · back tick
- Search it as
- backtick symbol · code quote · accent grave · reverse apostrophe · ` symbol
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
`\0060Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.