[B-Greek] strange looking pi?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Sep 26 06:42:01 EDT 2006


Forwarded for: Nick Nicholas <opoudjis at optushome.com.au>
Date: September 25, 2006 10:03:19 PM EDT

Dear folks,

the cursive pi is deal in contemporary usage (except when someone  
wants to emulate Zapf Chancery in Greek fonts, which doesn't happen  
much); that includes handwriting. So no contemporary data.

Don't underestimate the potential of both scribes and typographers to  
introduce variant glyphs just because; I think you'll *usually* find  
the the cursive internally, but won't swear to it. In early printing  
the cursive was certainly the most frequent glyph. You'd also want to  
see what letters it occurs next to if you want to discern a pattern.

Jim Darlack's scan looks 18th century, and I admit, it does seem  
random: (using P1 for cursive pi) P1EPOIQW/S vs. PE/POIQEN, I suspect  
the cursive in PT- and PR- are holdovers from earlier ligated forms.  
Bear in mind that the 18th century, when the old ligatures were  
abandoned, was a huge shift in the typography of Greek; even if there  
were rules before on the use of cursive pi before (and I doubt it),  
there would have been confusion introduced by the new breaking up of  
letters. And *pace* Fr Silver's response, it wasn't Greeks deciding  
how to break the letters up --- the innovation happened in

The Hellenomnimon Project (http://www.space.noa.gr/hellinomnimon/ 
project.htm) contains scans of 17th and 18th century Greek scientific  
books; it's down right now. but has a couple of hundred texts in  
representative early printing. The Greek Font Society has put online  
their beautiful volume on the history of Greek typography (in the  
Greek-language version of the site, and the text is in Greek, but at  
least there's pictures :-) ); the chapter on the 17-18th century is  
at http://www.greekfontsociety.org/images/greektablets/JohnLane.pdf

Nick Nicholas




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