{"id":7083,"date":"2015-05-31T01:25:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-31T09:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7083"},"modified":"2015-08-25T23:17:25","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T07:17:25","slug":"a-question-of-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=7083","title":{"rendered":"A Question of Characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

At various times, I'm confronted with confusion by persons and by systems of characters<\/span> with glyphs<\/span>. Most of the time, that confusion is a very minor annoyance; sometimes, as when wrestling with the preparation of a technical document, it can cause many hours of difficulty.<\/p>

It's probably rather easier for people first to see that a character<\/span> may have multiple glyphs<\/span>. For example, here are two distinct yet common glyphs<\/span> for the lower-case letter a<\/q>: \"\"<\/image> and here are two for g<\/q>: \"\"<\/image><\/p>

People have a bit more trouble with the idea that a single glyph<\/span> can correspond to more than one character<\/span>. Perhaps most educated folk generally understand that a Greek Ρ<\/q> is not<\/em> our P<\/q>, even though one could easily imagine an identical glyph<\/span> being used in some fonts. But many people think that they're looking at a o<\/q> with an umlaut<\/span> in each of these two words: \"\"<\/image> whereäs the two dots over the o<\/q> in the first word are a diæresis<\/span>, an ancient diacritical mark used in various languages to clarify whether and how a vowel is pronounced.[1]<\/span> The two dots over the o<\/q> in the German shön<\/span><\/q> are indeed an umlaut<\/span>, which evolved far more recently from a superscript e<\/q><\/em>.[2]<\/span> (One may alternately write the same word schoen<\/span><\/q>, whereäs schon<\/span><\/q> is a different word.)<\/p>

Out of context, what one sees<\/em> is a glyph<\/span>. Generally, we need context<\/em> to tell use whether we're looking at Ϲ<\/q> (upper-case lunate sigma), our familiar C<\/q>, or С<\/q> (upper-case Cyrillic ess); likewise for many other characters<\/span> and their similar or identical glyphs<\/span>. Until comparatively recently, we usually had sufficient context, mistakes were relatively infrequent and usually unimportant. (Okay, so a bunch of people thought that the Soviet Union called itself the CCCP<\/q>, rather than the СССР<\/q>. Meh.) But, with the development of electronic information technology, and with globalization, the distinction becomes more pressing. Most of us have seen the problems of OCR<\/abbr>; these are essentially problems of inferring characters<\/span> from glyphs<\/span>. It's not so messy when converting instead from plain-text or from something such as ODF<\/abbr>, but when character<\/span> substitutions were made based upon similarity or identity of glyph<\/span>, the very<\/em> same problems can then arise. For example, as I said, one sees<\/em> glyphs<\/span>, but what is heard<\/em> when the text is rendered audible will be phonetic values associated with the characters<\/span> used. And sometimes the system will process a less-than<\/span> sign as a left angle bracket<\/span>, because everyone else is using it as such. In an abstract sense, these are of course problems of transliteration<\/em>, and of its effects upon translation<\/em>.<\/p>

Some of you will recognize the contrast between character<\/span> and glyph<\/span> as a special case of the contrast between content<\/span> and presentation<\/span> — between what one seeks to deliver<\/em> and the manner of delivery<\/em>. Some will also note that the boundary between the two shifts. For example, the difference between upper-case and lower-case letters originated as nothing more than a difference in glyphs<\/span>. Indeed, our R<\/q> was once no more than a different way of writing the Greek Ρ<\/q>; our A<\/q> simply was<\/em> the Greek Α<\/q>, and it can remain hard to distinguish them! I don't know that ſ<\/q> (long ess) should be regarded as a different character<\/em> from s<\/q>, rather than just as an archaïc glyph<\/span> thereof.<\/p>

Still, the fact that what is sometimes mere presentation<\/span> may at other times be<\/em> content<\/span> doesn't mean that we should forgo the gains to be had in being mindful of the distinction and in creating structures that often<\/em> help us to avoid being shackled to the accidental<\/span>.<\/p>

[1]<\/span> In English and most other languages, a diæresis over the second of two vowels indicates that the vowel is pronounced separately, rather than forming a diphthong. (So here \/koˈapəˌret\/<\/span> rather than \/ˈkupəˌret\/<\/span> or \/ˈkʊpəˌret\/<\/span>.) Over a vowel standing alone, as in Brontë<\/q>, the diæresis signals that the vowel is not silent. (In English and some other languages, a grave accent may be used to the very same effect.) Portuguese cleverly uses a diæresis over the first<\/em> of two vowels to signal that diphthong is formed where it might not be expected.<\/p>

[2]<\/span> Germans used to use a dreadful script — Kurrentschrift<\/span> — in which such an evolution is less surprising.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At various times, I'm confronted with confusion by persons and by systems of characters with glyphs. Most of the time, that confusion is a very minor annoyance; sometimes, as when wrestling with the preparation of a technical document, it can cause many hours of difficulty. It's probably rather easier for people first to see that […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,69,4],"tags":[793,1271,1273,1275,1270,1272,810,1274],"class_list":["post-7083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-information-technology","category-public","tag-characters","tag-content","tag-diaereses","tag-diereses","tag-glyphs","tag-presentation","tag-symbols","tag-umlauts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}