This is what I get when I do "C-u C-x =" on the first single quote in the message form:
position: 206 of 208 (99%), column: 14
character: ' (displayed as ') (codepoint 39, #o47, #x27)
preferred charset: ascii (ASCII (ISO646 IRV))
code point in charset: 0x27
script: latin
syntax: ' which means: prefix
category: .:Base, a:ASCII, l:Latin, r:Roman
to input: type "C-x 8 RET 27" or "C-x 8 RET APOSTROPHE"
buffer code: #x27
file code: #x27 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
display: by this font (glyph code)
xft:-unknown-DejaVu Sans Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-13-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#x0A)
Character code properties: customize what to show
name: APOSTROPHE
old-name: APOSTROPHE-QUOTE
general-category: Po (Punctuation, Other)
decomposition: (39) (''')
There are text properties here:
face font-lock-string-face
fontified nil
This is what I get when I do "C-u C-x =" on the first single quote in the *Messages* buffer (C-h e):
position: 67 of 338 (20%), column: 0
character: ’ (displayed as ’) (codepoint 8217, #o20031, #x2019)
preferred charset: unicode (Unicode (ISO10646))
code point in charset: 0x2019
script: symbol
syntax: . which means: punctuation
category: .:Base, c:Chinese, h:Korean, j:Japanese
to input: type "C-x 8 RET 2019" or "C-x 8 RET RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK"
buffer code: #xE2 #x80 #x99
file code: #xE2 #x80 #x99 (encoded by coding system utf-8-unix)
display: by this font (glyph code)
xft:-unknown-DejaVu Sans Mono-normal-normal-normal-*-13-*-*-*-m-0-iso10646-1 (#x6C1)
Character code properties: customize what to show
name: RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
old-name: SINGLE COMMA QUOTATION MARK
general-category: Pf (Punctuation, Final quote)
decomposition: (8217) ('’')
I believe emacs should not be converting all APOSTROPHE characters to RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK characters. The displayed messages look just plain weird. To fix that, I would then need to replace all 'MSG' (apostrophe MSG apostrophe) type message displays to `MSG' (back quote MSG apostrophe), which is not practical.
Or, is there a defcustom I need to set to prevent this character translation to curvy quotes?