Into the 19th century, accepted orthography often used a letter character that resembles an F (but is not in fact identical to an F) when today we would invariably use an S.   What is this character called?  What were the orthographic rules of its usage?  Was it inherited from the German language?
120398
What animal is depicted in this image labelled “weefil”?
54107
Typesetting that goes beyond the scope of basic MS Word (e.g. LaTeX, or even modern Word versions with a good OpenType font) often uses ligatures for certain glyph combinations, the most common being   f + f = ﬀ f + i = ﬁ f + l = ﬂ f + f + i = ﬃ f + f + l = ﬄ.   I would assume, however, that there are cases in which a ligature shouldn't be used. Are there any rules or standards telling me when I should use a ligature and when I shouldn't?
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When it is requested to write letter "í" in math mode, it happens that $\acute{i}$ is not the right answer as it could be expected: the accent (´) is written over the letter (i), without deleting/overwriting the upper dot (^{.}) Another possiblity to solve the problem: $\acute{\imath}$, not always works satisfactorily. Is there another way to do it, obtaining an acceptable/appropriate character?
82735
I don't know too many languages, but the ones I know have more elaborate names for their letters than the monosyllabicity of names for English letters. (E.g. - I'll pick on Greek here - ay instead of alpha, bee for beta, etc.)  How did these short names evolve, and when?  Further, why do nine of the letter-names (B, C, D, E, G, P, T, V, Z) end with "ee" (as in "bee"), while six others (F, L, M, N, S, X) begin with "eh" (as in "ef")?  And why do (H, K, Q, R, W, sometimes Z) have less orthodox names?  (Is "ar" for "R" a corruption of "ehr", perhaps?) "J" needs to be different, so as not to be confused with "G".  The remaining ones (vowels, incidentally: A, I, O, U, Y) I understand as not possible to fit into any regular pattern.  Maybe the answer is simply that letter-names, like the language, are not logically created; rather evolved erratically.  But I want to make sure.  Does anyone have any answers?
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I've always been confused by the differences in behavior of font commands.  For example, we have \mathrm{} and \texttt{}, which can be used like this: \texttt{hello} world.  And then we have \it and \bf which must be used as {\it hello} world. If one uses \it{hello} world, both words are italicized.  Internally, what is the difference here? And was this difference a conscious design decision? If so, why?
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I am quite sure that there is a word for a symbol which was originated by a real-life, physical prototype but has since then outlived its origin.  Most notable example: the save button with floppy drive on it. Also, to a lesser degree, envelopes in email clients, and so on.  The "anachronism" or "metonymy" are close, but not exactly what I'm searching for.
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Given that English is derived mostly from German, when Anglo-Saxons (German tribes) migrated to Britain, how do you explain that   although German has a strict correspondence between written language and spoken language (the sounds largely follow 1-1 what is written)... English has sooo intricate pronunciation rules, sometimes directly at odds with what is written? (Too bored to give examples, but it should be obvious).   My pet, tongue-in-cheek theory is that those tribes weren't too literate, didn't have a sound knowledge of the written form of words, so it was easy the pronunciation to follow its own independent path.   Anyone with a more informed explanation?
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In German, as well as in other languages, people have Non-English characters in their names. e.g. ß, the umlauts etc..    I frequently face problems when flying, opening bank accounts, etc., particularly abroad, since replacing the ß with ss changes more more than 25% of my family name as compared to how it's written in my passport.  Obviously it is desirable to write one's name for submissions, the way one's name is written correctly. Can one expect to run into problems, and will sooner or later end up with different publications being published under different spellings of the name, or is it safe to go for the correct spelling?
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When spelling, every letter in the Alphabet is pronounced by a single syllable, with the only exception of W being pronounced "double-U". (Fun fact, in German it's approximately pronounced like the "ve" in very, but in some strike of cosmic justice Y is pronounced "Yps-e-lon") Why is that? Is there any at least semi-officially accepted one-syllable alternative pronunciation of W?  I checked some related post, e.g. , but they are more concerned with the "Why?" instead of the "Why not different?"
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My dad and I were playing a game in the car where we picked a letter and then each alternated saying a word that started with that letter. We did it with b, for example, it might go:     Dad: bath   me: ball   dad: buffalo   me: bank   etc.   As we were playing/debating the rules of our game, I noticed that there were no b-words that I could think of that started with a sound other than /b/. Whereas, for example, for words starting with the letter t, some of them begin with the sound /ð/ or /θ/ rather than /t/.  Am I missing some obvious contradictions to this 'rule'? Is there any sort of etymological explanation for this?  To clarify as requested by a comment:  I am looking for   A word that starts with a b that makes a sound other than /b/. More broadly, whether or not there is an etymologically explained pattern among starting letters that shows whether or not there exists the non-phonetic sound at the beginning of a word for a certain letter (or the commonality of the existence of those cases).   From here I'm looking at which starting letters of words have a tendency to be pronounced non-phonetically.
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I know, I know - similar questions have been asked before, but after reading so many answers here and elsewhere my intuitions have been scrambled and I have lost confidence in my normal practice...   Stylistics originally developed out of what was known in the past as 'rhetoric'.   Stylistics originally developed out of what was known in the past as "rhetoric".   Stylistics originally developed out of what was known in the past as rhetoric.   Normally (and throughout the previous hundred+ pages I have just proof-read) I would have favoured single quotation marks to indicate that I am mentioning rather than using a word.  I'm reluctant to introduce an inconsistency into my proofing, but somehow the single quotation marks look quite wrong in these sentences - the single quotation marks seem to suggest an unusual word or a non-standard use, whereas italics seems much more natural. Is there actually a subtle difference that I can't quite coax into consciousness? Or am I just tired...?  Similarly, 'philology', linguistics' and 'stylistics' in the following sentences (bolded just to highlight the words I am talking about):   During the nineteenth century rhetoric was incorporated into linguistics, which was known at that time as philology.   The emphasis shifted to other areas of language which all fall under the umbrella of linguistics. [Neither quotation marks nor italics for 'linguistics' in this sentence?]  After that, in the 1960s, the sub-discipline known as stylistics was born.
115744
Can someone identify the fonts used in the words "nature methods" in the following image?    I think that the word "nature" is in Times or Times New Roman (?) but can't figure out what font the word "methods" is in.  Any ideas?
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I've noticed that many posters, advertisements, etc -- as well as many fonts -- use the lowercase letter "a" as shown in "figure 1". However, I've always hand-written it as what it looks like in "figure 2". Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that I almost never seen the second version in application. It doesn't seem to be a serif/sans issue, as I've seen plenty of sans serif fonts that use a variation of the first "a".  Is there a reason for this? Why are there two very-different versions of the same letter? Is there a reason why the first one is much more prevalent in fonts and graphic-applications?
21058
Sometimes, more in some languages than in others, a word is spelled using one or more numbers instead of letters. Is there a term for this?  The only example I can think of in English is se7en (seven).   Therefore,     The number se7en was not spelled entirely with letters; it was written in   ______.
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The example I am thinking of is GNU, which stands for "".  It may be that there are no other examples. And maybe that's the whole joke. I was just wondering.
61891
I am trying to get a ẞ in my LaTeX document. How can I do this? I already tried:   Using other fonts: dejavu and libertine Using \MakeUppercase{ß}, which sometimes produces nothing, sometimes produces "SS" Using {\sc ß}, which sometimes produces nothing, sometimes produces "SS" Using XeTeX and lualatex: Just leaves out ẞ and warns about the Glyph that it could not find Using \symbol{"1E9E}, which also produces nothing   How can I do this?
120846
What do these capital letters mean after the / character in the en-US.dic file found in the \Firefox\Dictionaries folder?  For example:  collectivism/M collectivist/MS collectivity collectivization/M collectivize/GDS collector/MS colleen/SM college/SM collegial   What does M or MS or GDS, etc. mean?  I'm sure there's documentation online somewhere, but I'm not having much luck finding it.