What's the semantic difference between the backtick and quote symbols in Common Lisp?

Question

I understand that both suppress evaluation of a symbol or expression. But the backtick is used for macro definitions while the apostrophe is used for symbols (among other things). What is the difference, semantically speaking, between these two notations?

Answer 1

Backticks allow for ,foo and ,@foo to interpolate dynamic parts into the quoted expression.

' straight up quotes everything literally.

If there are no comma parts in the expression, ` and ' can be used interchangeably.