Stigma and Final Sigma

Mark Goodacre M.S.Goodacre at bham.ac.uk
Fri Nov 1 20:18:02 EST 2002


Huge thanks to Stephen, Carl and Daniel for sorting me out on stigma, 
digamma, final sigma et al -- just what I was looking for.

On 31 Oct 2002 at 22:42, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:

> Because of its similarity in shape to the final sigma,
> the stigma is sometimes replaced by the final sigma,
> perhaps due to computing limits or out of ignorance.
> The SP Ionic font has both the final sigma (j) and the
> stigma (v).

It is interesting you should mention this because it relates to what 
generated my interest in the first place.  David Instone Brewer has 
for a while had an excellent "Tyndale Fonts Kit" on the Tyndale House 
web site and he has recently added some extra documentation, to which 
I was adding a link on the Greek NT Gateway.  The problem I've always 
had with the Tyndale Fonts Kit, though, and still the reason I'm 
loathe to recommend it to my students is that in its reworking of 
SPIonic, it automatically adds at the end of words not the final 
sigma (which, as you point out, is normally mapped to the "j") but 
the stigma (normally mapped to the "v").  I was looking to see if 
this was still the case on the Tyndale Fonts Kit, and it is.  I then 
began to wonder if I'd perhaps misunderstood the relationship between 
stigma and final sigma.  As it happens, it seems that I was right 
about final sigma and stigma being different;  but I see that 
actually I was confused overall about the relationships between 
these.   So thanks again for the useful clarifications.

All best
Mark
-----------------------------
Dr Mark Goodacre                 mailto:M.S.Goodacre at bham.ac.uk
  Dept of Theology                  tel: +44 121 414 7512
  University of Birmingham      fax: +44 121 414 4381
  Birmingham    B15 2TT  UK
  
http://www.bham.ac.uk/theology/goodacre
http://NTGateway.com




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