Talk:suꝑficialis

Deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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suꝑficialis

See also discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Font support for Latin Extended-D.

As far as I know we exclude such spellings on the same grounds we exclude long-s spellings for German, fi-ligature spellings for English and the like. -- Liliana • 21:36, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Delete. --WikiTiki89 22:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Even if we allowed use of the contested character, it's an abbreviation, not an alternative spelling, and the cited use has no space in it. Considering the prevalence of conventions such as having part of a word in smaller characters above the line and underlined, though, I think it would be a bad idea to even try representing scribal shorthand. This particular variation has a Unicode look-alike, but most won't. Chuck Entz (talk) 22:39, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Pace the nominator, Liliana, the exclusionary principle that applies to ſ, fi, etc. is inapplicable to ꝑ; ſ and fi can in every case be correctly converted to s and fi, respectively, without error. Ꝑ cannot be converted in the same way because sometimes it acts as a sigil for per, otherwise it may represent par, and at other times it stands for por. Therefore, the autoredirection that can be implemented for ſ, fi, and the like cannot be implemented for ꝑ.

@Chuck Entz: This isn't just "a Unicode look-alike", it's one of Unicode's "Medievalist additions"; i.e., this is exactly the sort of thing for which ꝑ was intended. The Medieval Unicode Font Initiative works to sort out which characters mean what, and where their proposals are accepted by the Unicode Consortium, I believe we should use these characters where appropriate. I'm not suggesting that we try to copy every nuance of scribal shorthand, but where certain conventions are sufficiently clear and widespread that they have been granted codepoints, I think it's safe for us to represent that aspect of scribal abbreviation.

Keep as creator. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 00:19, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Keep ꝑ I.S.M.E.T.A. (How clever of me.) --Æ&Œ (talk) 21:32, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Here are forty-five more uses of ſuꝑficialis and Suꝑficialis, in texts dated between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42], [43], [44], [45] (and here's a use of suꝑficialis from 1902). Those are only the ones that have survived the OCR autodigitisation process, from the books available to Google, of one form (representing four of twenty-four inflections), of one word, in one language. I hope this shows that this kind of entry is not a marginal one of trifling unimportance. — I.S.M.E.T.A. 21:56, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

• RFD kept for no consensus for deletion (2 keeps, 2 deletes, 1 possible delete by Chuck Entz). --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2014 (UTC)