On 27 Jan 2019, at 01:37, Richard Wordingham via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org> wrote:I’ll be publishing a translation of Alice into Ancient Greek in due course. I will absolutely only use U+2019 for the apostrophe. It would be wrong for lots of reasons to use U+02BC for this.Please list them.The Greek use is of an apostrophe. Often a mark elision (as here), that’s what 2019 is for. 02BC is a letter. Usually a glottal stop. I didn’t follow the beginning of this. Evidently it has something to do with word selection of d’ + a space + what follows. If that’s so, then there’s no argument at all for 02BC. It’s a question of the space, and that’s got nothing to do with the identity of the apostrophe.Will your coding decision be machine readable for the readership?I don’t know what you mean by “readable”.Moreover, implementations of U+02BC need to be revised. In the context of Polynesian languages, it is impossible to use U+02BC if it is _identical_ to U+2019. Readers cannot work out what is what. I will prepare documentation on this in due course.It looks as though you've found a new character - or a revived distinction.It may not be “revived’. In origin, linguists took the lead-type 2019 and used it as a consonant letter. Now, in the 21st century, where Harry Potter is translated into Hawaiian, and where Harry Potter has glottals alongside both single and double quotation marks,
The use of quotation marks is language dependent. There is no
cast in stone requirement to use single quotation marks with
languages where it causes difficulties.
English uses apostrophe and single quotation marks - the former
are a bit more rare compared to when that symbol is used in some
languages, but in principle the same confusion applies and so far
hasn't prompted anyone to follow the lead of the French in choice
of quotation marks . . .
the 02BC’s need to be bigger or the text can’t be read easily. In our work we found that a vertical height of 140% bigger than the quotation mark improved legibility hugely. Fine typography asks for some other alterations to the glyph, but those are cosmetic. If the recommended glyph for 02BC were to be changed, it would in no case impact adversely on scientific linguistics texts. It would just make the mark a bit bigger. But for practical use in Polynesian languages where the character has to be found alongside the quotation marks, a glyph distinction must be made between this and punctuation.
It somehow seems to me that an evolution of the glyph shape of 02BC in a direction of increased distinction from U+2019 is something that Unicode has indeed made possible by a separate encoding. However, that evolution is a matter of ALL the language communities that use U+02BC as part of their orthography, and definitely NOT something were Unicode can be permitted to take a lead. Unicode does not *recommend* glyphs for letters.
However, as a publisher, you are of course free to experiment and to see whether your style becomes popular.
There is a concern though, that your choice may appeal only to
some languages that use this code point and not become universally
accepted.
A./
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