Message from Stan Ryckman [15:32 99-02-18 ]:
>>It baffles me. The apostrophe (') is a perfectly normal character
>>and as such should never be an object of any translations, "quoting"
>>or whatever... it should simply pass through just like a dot (.),
>>a dash (-) or an apersand (&).
>
>I wonder... I've sometimes received email (which I believe to have
>been prepared with a word processor rather than a text editor)
>where some 8-bit character appears where an apostrophe would have
>been expected.  My guess is that in this case an 8-bit character
>was used in the "French" message text.
>
>I couldn't locate one right now, so I'm not sure what the 8-bit
>value used was.

Yes, that's very probable. Some national editors/word processors
have own ideas e.g. on what a quotation mark (") is...

mjw