From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Thu Mar 29 2007 - 14:19:02 CST
> Working on a project at Distributed Proofreaders
> (<http://www.pgdp.net>) for Project Gutenberg
> (<http://www.gutenberg.org>), I think I've found an unencoded
> character used in two books from Ginn & Company as part of a
> pronunciation scheme. It's a combining up tack above used to modify
> vowels. Rather than try and send the pages through the list, I've put
> up a Q&D webpage:
> <http://prosfilaes.googlepages.com/combiningtackabove>. Am I missing
> this character somewhere in Unicode?
I don't think you've missed this character anywhere -- I don't think
it is encoded in Unicode.
But I disagree with your interpretation of it.
It is pretty clear that in conceptual origin this is a diacritic-modified
macron. It is used in this obsolete (and discredited) dictionary
pronunciation system to indicate "the long sound of that vowel
shortened...", in a system where vowel letters are marked for
their "long sound" with macrons.
The one citation in isolation in the 2nd document example,
which looks like U+2AE0 SHORT UP TACK (rather than
U+22A5 UP TACK) doesn't demonstrate a conceptual origin with
either of those math symbols, IMO.
So, no, this is not U+031D COMBINING UP TACK BELOW -- only
rendered above a letter. It is, instead, a COMBINING MACRON WITH
VERTICAL TICK or some such.
If you look at the actual instances of the usage of this with
letters, you can see that the atrocious and inconsistent
details on the letters. Quite likely the printer for these
created the matrices for the letters by actually overstriking
existing matrices with punches for apostrophes -- you can see
the different degrees of overlaps and inconsistencies among
the various instances of the marked letters.
--Ken
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