Talk:Asterisk (disambiguation)

Word vs. mark

    While not all my remarks at Talk:Dagger (disambiguation)#Word vs. mark apply directly to the Dab page accompanying this talk, i am duplicating them here in the belief that most editors will get my drift and find it easy ignore assertions about aspects that differ. This copying is kind of a dump job, and if you both object to that and disagree with my edit, please at least summarize your concerns about the Dab edit (and if too much silence has given the impression of assent by then, notify me), and i'll comment directly on this similar situation.

   I will not say that no typographical mark and the word corresponding to it should never share the same Dab page. I do feel safe, tho, in saying that when they do, and the talk page contains no defense of that, at least the remedy of providing such a defense is needed, to avoid

1. the impression that all such pairs should so share, and
2. multiple editors wasting time duplicating each others' thoro or sparse research before each going on to something else.

Consequently i am undertaking to examine the articles on the accompanying page's entries. My speculation is that i'll end up splitting the page into, more or less, Dagger (disambiguation), and † (disambiguation) (which may also cover ‡) -- undoubtedly needing at least minor duplication between them.
--Jerzy•t 00:35, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

   OK, the inclusion of specific uses of the typographic daggers (basic and double) on the Dab didn't begin until June 2008, and even now only has progressed to the extent of three links for articles specific to things the daggers are used to indicate.
   In fact, the typography-sense article has about a dozen uses, including ten under "other uses". My conclusion is that the established approach is to treat the uses of † (and ‡) as afterthots to the reference-label (and date-of-death marker -- a difference in treatment whose logic is not apparent), within that article -- and that the three Dab entries should be merged into that article until there is consensus for some other approach that is consistent across the various uses of †.
   (A nuance that i am also led to is that "Quine's dagger" and † as a suffix that is pronounced "dagger" -- A† is called "A-dagger", Hermitian adjoint of a matrix named A; IMO Dab entries keyed from these uses of the word dagger make Dab entries appropriate, even if they refer mainly or entirely to spoken use of the word.)
   Just a thot toward the longer-term discussion, which i may not otherwise participate in: consider splitting Dagger (typography) into two articles, the second being pretty much an SIA. I'm tempted by the idea of limiting the first (Typographic daggers?) to the issues of shape, typefaces, coding, transition from presumably medieval or ancient practice to moveable type, and other meaning-independent aspects. (Some may argue that the use as tags connecting ancillary text to the main stream of text -- "asterisk supplements" -- is so widely understood and used that this principal application should be treated as part of the basic treatment of the symbols and thus part of Typographic daggers or whatever; i expect to differ, for the record, but enuf said.) The 2nd article (SIA?) in any case would be essentially a list of items, each naming the context of the use, anything likely to aid distinctions among the kinds of use (between two letters for Logical NOR; as suffix for Hermitian; etc.) and either

* linking to an article that explains whatever it is the dagger is adding to the party, or
* serving as a glossary definition for some use of † that's hard to tease out of a dict but can't be expanded into an article, i.e., beyond a dictdef.

   So, as to this Dab, i'm narrowing the scope by moving the info on † when it's not likely to be read out loud as "dagger" to Dagger (typography). If i get further than that (e.g., offering a concrete restructuring of that article, such as i've mentioned above, i'll comment at talk:Dagger (typography) on the rest.
--Jerzy•t 06:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

   Brief inspection of the Dab and Asterisk (the typography article) suggest that the article is more to my liking than Dagger (typography), and that the "*" Dab entries are likely, after inspection of their respective articles, to deserve the same treatment i gave the "†" entries in the Dagger dab.
--Jerzy•t 23:10, 5 August 2011 (UTC)