Re: Which characters to use for (pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd)

From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2007 - 13:43:40 CDT

  • Next message: Andreas Stötzner: "Re: PCL (was RE: Use of interum PUA encodings for 85 letters)"

    Chris Key asked:

    > I'm hoping that someone might be able to advise the correct (or at least
    > best) way to typeset the title in the following image,
    >
    > http://www.lynyrdskynyrd.com/images/albums_large/pronounced.jpg

    > The best rendering that I've found so far is as used by wikipedia,
    > (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), or shown in,
    >
    >
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%28pronounced_%27l%C4%95h-%27n%C3%A9rd_%27skin-%27n
    %C3%A9rd%29

    I think the wikipedia has this correct.

    > Here, four apostrophes have been used to represent the four apostrophe
    > like symbols on the original.

    And in particular, the directionless apostrophe, U+0027, rather than
    the regular text apostrophe, U+2019 -- particularly as this was
    set with a typewriter-style font.

    This usage is based on old American dictionary practice of marking
    stress this way in the front of a syllable.

    The more technical pair of characters used for this stress
    marking in Websters-type dictionaries nowadays is:

    U+02C8 MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE
    U+02CC MODIFIER LETTER LOW VERTICAL LINE

    when dictionaries contrast a primary stress with the first (higher
    form) and a secondary stress with the second (lower form).

    > On the original, however, the first such
    > character is significantly larger and higher set than the remaining
    > three in order to denote that stress be placed on the first syllable.

    Actually, I disagree. I think this was likely a design conceit
    by whoever designed the text for the album cover -- and the higher
    form in front of the "l" is higher simply because the "l" is
    an ascender (taller) letter, whereas the other 3 letters ("n", "s",
    and "n" again) are shorter.

    Certainly the "pronunciation" doesn't pass muster as an actual
    representation, because it wouldn't need 4 stress marks. And
    the e-acutes don't follow American dictionaries, either. They
    might have been a substitution for schwas that the font didn't
    have.

    >
    > I've had a good look through all the potentially relevant unicode
    > blocks, but haven't yet found a suitable pair of characters to use here.
    > Can anyone advise what might be suitable?

    Just use the wikipedia representation. I think that is good
    enough.

    --Ken

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Oct 16 2007 - 13:47:09 CDT