Re: U+0023

From: Patrick Andries (patrick.andries@xcential.com)
Date: Fri Apr 01 2005 - 12:27:51 CST

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    Doug Ewell a écrit : 
    When we went through our initial round of UI translations, ten years
ago, our subsidiary in France flat-out insisted that U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN
be used for the "numero" abbreviation, and not U+00BA MASCULINE ORDINAL
INDICATOR.

This was even after I pointed out the availability of both, in both the
MS-DOS and Windows code pages (we didn't support Unicode yet), and even
after I pointed out that this was a UI display issue and had no bearing
on what customers might type.

No, they said.  It's DEGREE SIGN.
    I'm afraid, they are wrong. I had a discussion with Jacques André a few years ago on this, he is one of the best authority on the history of French typography.
     It is a letter « o » (like in *N*umer*o*) whose rim is not of even width and is more oval than the degree sign.

    Also consider Numeros (viz. n<sup>os</sup> in the middle of a sentence or N<sup>os</sup> at the start) what would a degree sign do between the letters N and s ?

    Does any know of a font including the two plural forms of numéro with the o and s underlined ?

    P. A.

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