At 10:05 -0800 2001-12-02, John Hudson wrote:
>At 14:14 12/1/2001, Michael Everson wrote:
>
>>It is certainly not a glyph variant of an ampersand. An ampersand
>>is a ligature of e and t. This is certainly an abbreviation of och.
>>That both mean "and" is NOT a reason for unifying different signs.
>
>The fact that & is accepted by Swedish readers as a substitute for
>the 'och' sign, and that the latter seems to be limited to
>manuscript, suggests a glyph variant. I do not consider the fact
>that both mean 'and' to be a reason for unifying different signs. I
>ponder whether two different signs that are apparently used
>*interchangeably* might be unified?
Um, I accept "etc." and "&c." and "7c." (the last with a Tironian et,
admittedly peculiar to most readers of English) as "meaning" the same
thing but that doesn't mean that & and 7 are the same character. They
have different origins which are well known. You don't unify that
kind of thing.
In Irish many people accept "srl" and "&rl" and "7rl" as meaning the
same thing as well. The form with the actual & is considered peculiar.
"o." and "o-with-underscore" are NOT glyph variants of a ligature of
e and t (at a character level), no matter what they mean.
-- Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com
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