[Biblical-languages] Apostrophe / Coronis
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk at ntlworld.com
Sat May 3 21:20:37 EDT 2003
I think in the light of this, and particularly the paper by Yannis Haralambous (URL as below), we can safely conclude that U+2019 should be used for the apostrophe in Greek texts, rather than any of the alternatives I mentioned earlier (0027, 02BC, 1FBD, 1FBF).
This implies that there is a need to correct some of the supporting files (though not the font itself) in Galatia SIL Greek Unicode Fonts (http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/silgrkuni/):
The conversion table SILGreek.map should convert apostrophe to right_single_quotation_mark (2019), not modifier_letter_apostrophe (02BC).
The conversion table SIL Galatia – Unicode.cct should convert apostrophe to 2019, not 1FBD.
The keyboard GrkPolyCompv5.KMN should generate 2019, not 1FBF, for an apostrophe.
And all texts which have been converted using these tables should be converted again with the modified tables.
It could be argued that U+0343 rather than U+0313 should be used as mark of crasis. On the other hand, Unicode defines these two as canonically equivalent, which implies that it is unnecessary to change texts because of this. The text I have in front of me uses U+1F00 for the alpha with crasis in κἀγὼ = KAGW in Matthew 2:8; as canonically 1F00 = 03B1 0313 = 03B1 0343, this is not an error and no corrective action is required.
Peter Kirk
peter.r.kirk at ntlworld.com
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: biblical-languages-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:biblical-
> languages-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Giuseppe Regalzi
> Sent: 03 May 2003 11:54
> To: Biblical Languages
> Subject: Re: [Biblical-languages] Apostrophe / Coronis
>
> Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> > OK, not the Coronis then... but which apostrophe? I notice you use 0027
> > on your website, and it is called APOSTROPHE in the Unicode standard,
> > but in that document the "preferred character for apostrophe" is 2019.
> > So which apostrophe is an apostrophe is an apostrophe?
>
>
> Quoting from the always enlightening Yannis Haralambous ("Guidelines and
> Suggested Amendments to the Greek Unicode Tables," in Proceedings of the
> International Unicode Conference 21, Dublin 2002,
> http://omega.enstb.org/yannis/pdf/amendments2.pdf):
>
>
> Guidelines, Rule 7: Apostrophe vs. Smooth Breathing
>
> rule: Use U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK rather than U+1FBF GREEK
> PSILI as an apostrophe.
>
> rationale: the reader may ask "why on earth would anyone use U+1FBF GREEK
> PSILI as an apostrophe in the first place?" Well, the fact is that the
> shape of the apostrophe in Greek typography is exactly the one of the
> smooth breathing U+1FBF GREEK PSILI. The "Latin" apostrophe U+2019 RIGHT
> SINGLE QUOTATION MARK is a bit longer, and looks more like a comma than
> like a smooth breathing. This difference seems small, but is quite
> unpleasant when you have both an apostrophe and a smooth breathing close
> to each other, and this happens quite often in Greek. Therefore one could
> be tempted to use U+1FBF GREEK PSILI (which after all, is a spacing
> diacritic) as an apostrophe. (See also fig. 4.)
> This would be against Unicode principles: in fact, it is the rendering
> engine which should change the shape of the apostrophe in a Greek context.
> En passant, note that Greek is the only language in the world where a
> blank space is systematically inserted after an apostrophe.
>
>
> Hope this helps,
> Giuseppe Regalzi
>
> regalzi at tiscali.it
> http://purl.org/net/regalzi/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Biblical-languages mailing list
> Biblical-languages at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/biblical-languages
More information about the Biblical-languages
mailing list