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This article feels unfinished. The first example given, of the elongated c with superscript o is not justified. Why the elongation? Why the superscript o? Is th
by MatthewWilkes 12y ago
This article feels unfinished. The first example given, of the elongated c with superscript o is not justified. Why the elongation? Why the superscript o? Is this a common pattern in medieval Italian?
Next, it jumps to something very much resembling the modern percent sign without an argument as to why it's the same thing. Why would the c close? Why would the p be omitted? Is the bottom symbol a modified c or a modified p? Why did the elongation get detached from the C and move above?
- danbruc 12y agoMost of the time it is laziness and writing or wanting to write quickly. See for example also the Dollar sign [1]. [1] http://observationdeck.io9.com/why-is-the-dollar-sign-a-letter-s-1683940575 http://observationdeck.io9.com/why-is-the-dollar-sign-a-lett...
- bweitzman 12y agoNeat. the dollar sign also has eight segments to it, so it is literally pieces of eight.
- MatthewWilkes 12y agoSure, and I can see that at least somewhat with pc⎻⎻̊ as a lazy "ent" being flattened, but I'd be interested as to why the o is superscripted rather than simply distinguishable at the end of the word, as well as knowing if it was usual to include the 'o' when writing lazily. Secondly, the '-̥̊'[1] character actually looks like it'd be slower than '㍶' so it's a little counter intuitive why it would happen this way. I'd like to see references to other similar developments or precedents, rather than a three stage theory, especially when stage 2 and 3 are so similar. [1] - This looks brilliant in a monospace font, but crap in view mode, but I spent minutes getting it right so it's staying. It's the 2nd example from TFA.