----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Artstein" <artstein@essex.ac.uk>
To: <corpora@uib.no>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Encoding of apostrophes and quotes
>> One thing that has always baffled me was why Unicode decided to
>> assign the two characters U+05F3 Hebrew punctuation geresh and
>> U+05F4 Hebrew punctuation gershayim. Geresh (dual: gershayim) is
>> the Hebrew name for a punctuation mark similar to an apostrophe
>> which is used for marking abbreviations; in modern usage these have
>> identical glyphs to single and double quotes.
----------
Geresh (single quote) is used to indicate an abbreviation. It is placed
between the penultimate and final characters of the letter string: #'###.
Gershayim (double quote) may indicate an abbreviation but it is also used
to indicate a group of letters which should be interpreted as a number
according to the Hebrew system of numbering. The gershayim is placed
between the penultimate and final characters of the letter string: #"###.
Curiously, the name of Rabbi Yechiel Babad, as it appears printed on a
food package, includes a geresh in the forename and a gershayim in
the surname. http://www.hechshers.info/hechshers/542.htm
Kind regards,
Roger Harris.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jul 02 2006 - 02:26:12 MET DST