Re: Ancient Greek apostrophe marking elision

From: Asmus Freytag via Unicode <unicode_at_unicode.org>
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2019 22:19:50 -0800

On Sat, 26 Jan 2019 21:11:36 -0800
Asmus Freytag via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org> wrote:

On 1/26/2019 5:43 PM, Richard Wordingham via Unicode wrote:

That appears to contradict Michael Everson's remark about a
Polynesian
need to distinguish the two visually.

Why do you need to distinguish them? To code text correctly (so the
invisible properties are what the software expects) or because a
human reader needs the disambiguation in order to follow the text?

The latter phenomenon is so common throughout many writing systems,
that I have difficulties buying it.

It may be a matter of literacy in Hawaiian.  If the test readership
doesn't use ʼokina, it could be confusing to have to resolve the
difference between a sentence(?) starting with one from a sentence in
single quotes. Otherwise, one does wonder why the issue should only
arise now.

one does.

One other possibility is that single quote punctuation is being used on
a readership used to double quote punctuation.  Double quotes would
avoid the confusion.

Choice of quotation marks is language-based and for novels, many times there are
additional conventions that may differ by publisher.

Wonder why the publisher is forcing single quotes on them?

PS: I wasn't talking about what the Polynesians do; different part of
the world.

Why should the Polynesians be different?

I am simply stating that my evidence does not come from them. I have no special insight into what Polynesians do or do not do.

A./

Received on Sun Jan 27 2019 - 00:19:56 CST