Backtick

The backtick ` is a typographical mark used mainly in computing. It is also known as backquote, grave, or grave accent. The character was designed for typewriters to add a grave accent to a (lower-case) base letter, by overtyping it atop that letter. On early computer systems, however, this physical dead key+overtype function was rarely supported, being functionally replaced by precomposed characters. Consequently, this ASCII symbol was rarely (if ever) used in computer systems for its original aim and became repurposed in computer programming for many unrelated uses. The sign is located on the left-top of a US or UK layout keyboard, next to the 1 key. Provision (if any) of the backtick on other keyboards varies by national keyboard layout and keyboard mapping. In layouts that use the dead key concept, the backtick key is most frequently chosen for that purpose.