Talk:⚲
McElroy's source
[edit]This symbol is described by McElroy: "This symbol has been used to represent some persons who identify as asexual, neuter, or neutral gender. This symbol is used in botany to indicate "neuter" gender; botanically, this means that the plant has no pistils or stamens and reproduces vegetatively or asexually. Biologically, certain insect classes have no sex organs (or the organs are undeveloped, as in worker bees). The symbol is also referred to as neutrois." But, McElroy doesn't state their sources and its not really a scholarly work, even if it is comprehensive. Significantly, Simpson (“Botanical symbols: a new symbol set for new images”, in [1], volume 162, issue 2, February 2010, →DOI, retrieved 2023-03-06, pages 117–129) does not confirm the meaning of neuter for botany. They note "A few past symbols to denote ‘neuter’ were found, but the symbol , used by Willdenow, was much more extensively used to denote ‘woody perennial’, and the symbol for Mercury, , listed (but not attributed) in Lincoln et al. (1984), was used first by Linnaeus, and later by Willdenow and others, for ‘hermaphrodite’. A symbol not dissimilar to a lower case ‘q’ is listed in Scientific & Technical Acronyms, Symbols & Abbreviations (Erb & Keller, 2001) for the meaning ‘neuter cell or organism’ which, although suitably linear in style, is not in general botanical use and seems unrelated to the meaning. None of these were considered suitable for re-use as a new symbol to denote ‘sterile’." And Simpson proposes a different symbol would be suitable for botany (circle with a horizontal line in the middle). Yugyug (talk) 06:18, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- I would assume the "symbol not dissimilar to a lower case ‘q’" is ⚲. We could check Erb & Keller. kwami (talk) 17:27, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
- In Erb & Keller, p. 2095, it looks like they were trying to typeset ⚲ by overstriking a circle (as in male and female) and a pipe, but didn't do a very good job. The book is from 2001, several years before the Unicode character was adopted. kwami (talk) 01:31, 8 August 2023 (UTC)