RE: Small Latin Letter m with Macron

From: Frank da Cruz (fdc@columbia.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 16 2003 - 09:06:24 EST

  • Next message: John H. Jenkins: "Re: Small Latin Letter m with Macron"

    > The convention of using a horizontal line to mark an abbreviation, often
    > the omission of m or n, goes back to the middle ages (if not earlier)
    > and was often used in early printed books; apparently it has lived on in
    > some handwriting, to judge from your post.
    >
    It was used in English too, see:

      http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/st-erkenwald.html

    > I think that U+0305, the combining overscore, is the right thing to use
    > for marking such abbreviations. I would like to get confirmation of
    > this from others on the list just to be sure. The only alternative
    > would be the combining macron, U+0304, which in many fonts would look
    > too short.
    >
    See the above-referenced page. For putting a line over a single letter,
    the macron looks better (the overline is too wide), but you need the
    overline for making a line over a series of letters because the macron
    is not guaranteed to join.

    - Frank



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