Apoststructure

Apoststructure is a neologism used in some discussions of orthography and linguistics to refer to the structured use and analysis of apostrophe-like marks within writing systems. The term blends apostrophe with structure to emphasize that these marks carry systematic, language-dependent information rather than serving only decorative purposes.

Interpreted broadly, apoststructure encompasses the rules and patterns by which apostrophes indicate elision, possession, or other morpho-phonological phenomena, as well as how such marks interact with capitalization, hyphenation, and word boundaries. Cross-linguistically, languages differ in how apostrophes are used; for example, English employs apostrophes to mark contractions and possessives, whereas French uses elision with l’ or t’ to join articles and pronouns to following words, illustrating how apostrophes structure word forms.

Beyond prose, the concept is relevant to typography and digital text processing. In typography, apostrophes come in various glyphs and encoding forms, and apoststructure can refer to the rules guiding their typographic treatment across fonts and languages. In computer processing, tokenization and normalization must account for the apostrophe as a structural element, not just a simple character.

Status: apoststructure is not a widely standardized term in mainstream linguistics or typography; it appears mainly in niche discussions and pedagogical writing as a way to frame the study of apostrophe use as a structured phenomenon.

See also: Apostrophe; elision; possessive; orthography; punctuation; typography; Unicode.