Are you on a Macintosh? Type Option (Alt)-Shift-].

Are you on a PC? Type Alt-0146.

As an alternative, fool your computer by typing a single apostrophe after the numeral, then cut it and paste it in front of the numeral.

Thanks, Ricardo

You can also use the Glyphs palette, of course, to enter any character.

In such situations I find it quickest to type a character, the apostrophe, then delete the character. I've tried to memorize the keyboard sequence to get it, but in the moments it takes me to recall it (since I don't encounter this too often), I can use my hack more quickly. I do have a written list taped to the wall, but again, it takes longer to scan the list.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but to be technically correct, isn't option+shift+] the key combo for a single close quote? Given, a single close quote and an apostrophe often have identical designs, but I was under the impression that there were separate spots within a font for each character.

From what I understand this distinction is a little more crucial in the context of web typography, as many screen readers for the visually impaired read the characters semantically, not visually.

You're correct, Nick, that key combination is for the single closing quote. But in Fontographer, at least, that character is only drawn once and serves as both closing single quote and apostrophe (the "smart" or "curly" kind, of course).

The "apostrophe" is designed as a vertical tick mark in most fonts and is replaced by a single close quote by the "smart quote" feature in most design software. It may be semantically correct to use the tick-mark apostrophe in some cases, but it is more typographically correct to use the single close quote. Typographically and historically, the two are identical in appearance.

You're not the only one who has that problem Peter...
http://www.typophile.com/node/36875

Thanks for going into all that detail, Mark! You said it better than I could have.