I think that quotation marks are for quoting, and the apostrophe is used for its own things. But it is often suggested that the right single quotation mark (’) should be used instead of the apostrophe ('), especially in typography. Some text processors and typesetting systems automatically replace apostrophes by right single quotation marks, and Grammarly complains that the characters are inconsistent if it sees text with the apostrophe and one of „, “, ”, ‚, ‘, ’.

Why is the right single quotation mark used as the apostrophe? I think that that they are different characters looking different is good because they have different functions. That they look different can help understand text which would be ambiguous if they looked the same until the reader read more of the text and backtracked, like in this example:

Amy says “Bruce said ‘one of the greatest humans' achievements of all time’ yesterday.”.

If it had the right single quotation mark as the apostrophe, the reader could think that the inner quote ends at “humans'” and realise while reading “achievements of all time’” that this was still part of the inner quote, which would lead to an interruption of reading.

I think that quotation marks are for quoting, and the apostrophe is used for its own things. But it is often suggested that the right single quotation mark (’) should be used instead of the apostrophe ('), especially in typography. Some text processors and typesetting systems automatically replace apostrophes by right single quotation marks, and Grammarly complains that the characters are inconsistent if it sees text with the apostrophe and one of „, “, ”, ‚, ‘, ’.

Why is the right single quotation mark used as the apostrophe? I think that that they are different characters looking different is good because they have different functions. That they look different can help understand text which would be ambiguous if they looked the same until the reader read more of the text and backtracked, like in this example:

Amy says “Bruce said ‘one of the greatest humans' achievements of all time’ yesterday.”.

If this sentence had the right single quotation mark as the apostrophe, the reader might think that the inner quote ends at “humans'” and realise while reading “achievements of all time’” that this was still part of the inner quote, which would lead to an interruption of reading.