Re: Claudian letters

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Mon May 30 2005 - 15:41:38 CDT

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    At 15:07 -0400 2005/05/30, Ernest Cline wrote:
    >
    >I came across by accident a Wikipedia article on the Claudian
    >letters. This inspired me to also search the list archives
    >and to make the following comments based on all of this.
    >
    >1) Based on what is admittedly only an unsourced Wikipedia
    >article, I'm not convinced that LEFT TACK is an appropriate
    >choice to represent Claudius' chopped in half H. First, there is
    >the minor matter of glyph. The horizontal bar of LEFT TACK is
    >longer than the similar shaped Claudian letter. RIGHT TACK and
    >ASSERTION differ in their glyphs only in the length of the
    >horizontal bar, which implies that bar length is significant for
    >the TACK characters. The image in the Wikipedia article on the
    >Claudian letters looks more like a reversed ASSERTION than a
    >LEFT TACK. In addition the properties aren't quite right.
    >(I'm assuming that the description of this character in the
    >previous mailing list discussion as a RIGHT TACK was a case of
    >a mistaken character name. If not and the original respondent
    >was referring to a glyph shaped like the left half of a capital H
    >instead of the right half, then glyphic variation within the
    >Claudian letter would be an even stronger argument for a separate
    >letter.)

    It seems me that none of these mathematical characters have any
    semantic connection to the Claudian letters, even though, in the
    absence of a correct one, one might attempt to substitute one.

    -- 
       Hans Aberg
    


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