At 20:16 -0800 2000/01/04, Valeriy E. Ushakov wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 04, 2000 at 03:47:36PM -0800, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
>
> > If I understand this correctly, I will see a small T in a regular font,
> > and "m" if I switch to italics?
>
>Exactly. Should be easily verifiable by looking at almost any Russian
>newspaper.
Or any Windows CD-ROM. Of the fonts I have here, the 'T' shape is
used in Roman lc, with 'm' in italic lc in Arial Cyrillic, Bookman
Old Style Cyrillic, Garamond Cyrillic, and Times New Roman Cyrillic.
Bitstream Cyberbit, Courier New Cyrillic, and SGTC Hei GB Cyrillic
use the 'T' shape in both Roman and Italic.
>Children are taught to write "m" in handwriting and in
>primary school you'll get you mark down if you write small
>'blockprint' "T".
>
>As a side note: you can still see older people writing underbar under
>SHA and SCHA (and, rarely, under I) and overbar over TE (and, rarely,
>over PE), and I believe chidren were taught to do this several decades
>ago (I recall I saw this in my mother's old schoolbooks).
I was taught to write Cyrillic with over- and under-lines in high
school in 1962, by a Russian born a bit before 1900.
>The practice really makes sense if you consider runs of handwriting
>like:
>
> |/|/|/|/|/|/|/|/|/| - that should be 10 |/ elememts
>
>In fast handwriting curves of SHA, TE, I, PE &c and, as well,
>connections between letters become indistinguishable and writing bars
>helps to identify the above as "'Š¤Š" (tishi):
>
> ' Š ¤ Š
> ___
> |/|/|/|/|/|/|/|/|/|
> - --- -
>
>It also helps a lot for the writer himself to avoid "banana" problem.
>When I write this word in this "m"-style, I can't help but break in
>the middle and go back counting stems to understand which letter I'm
>writing.
>
>
> > Still, they're visually so completely different that, you hardly can
> > call them glyph variants.
>
>They _are_ glyph variants. E.g. I always write 'blockprint' small "T"
>in my handwriting (I also underline my SHAs) and my wife always writes
>"m".
Before the upper and lower case distinction set in, Roman capitals
and Carolingian miniscule, among others, were glyph variants with
quite considerable differences in shape.
>
>Another example is, perhaps, small DE which in italic font is almost
>always looks similar to U+2202 PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL (that's how I
>write it). OTOH, children in school are taught to write it like latin
>small "g" (that' how my wife writes it).
>
>
>SY, Uwe
>--
>uwe@ptc.spbu.ru | Zu Grunde kommen
>http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/ | Ist zu Grunde gehen
Edward Cherlin
Generalist
"A knot! Oh, do let me help undo it."
Alice in Wonderland
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