en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_dot
2 corrections found
Ancient Greek lacked word spacing or middle dots but instead ran all the letters together.
This is too absolute. Early Greek inscriptions did sometimes separate words with spaces or dot-like divider marks; scriptio continua became dominant later, especially from the classical period onward.
Full reasoning
The statement says Ancient Greek lacked word spacing or middle dots, full stop. But authoritative scholarship says that is not true across ancient Greek writing as a whole.
A Center for Hellenic Studies essay by Gregory Nagy states that "In early Greek alphabetic writing, the practice of dividing words from each other by way of blank spaces or special marks is well attested" in inscriptions from before the classical period, and that this practice only later became obsolescent as scriptio continua took over.
An Oxford University article on Greek inscriptions likewise explains that, in the ancient Mediterranean world, the equivalent of the space was often the dot, and specifically notes that many ancient Greek inscriptions use such dot-based word division.
So the accurate version is narrower: much ancient Greek writing, especially in the classical and later manuscript tradition, was written in scriptio continua; but it is incorrect to say ancient Greek categorically lacked word spacing or middle dots.
2 sources
- Performance and Text in Ancient Greece - The Center for Hellenic Studies
In early Greek alphabetic writing, the practice of dividing words from each other by way of blank spaces or special marks is well attested... But this practice... became obsolescent with the advent of the classical period. It was replaced by the practice of scriptio continua.
- Dots between words in Sicilian inscriptions. | Crossreads
In the ancient Mediterranean world, the equivalent of the space was often the dot <·>... In many ancient Greek (or Latin or Hebrew) inscriptions you get the equivalent of word division like this.
Unicode did not support this diacritic until June 2005.
The date is wrong. Unicode added U+0358 COMBINING DOT ABOVE RIGHT in Unicode 4.1.0, which the Unicode Consortium released on March 31, 2005, not in June 2005.
Full reasoning
The claim gives a specific month for Unicode support, but the Unicode Consortium's own documents show the character was supported earlier.
Unicode's official Version 4.1.0 page states that Unicode 4.1.0 was released on March 31, 2005. The official Unicode names list for the Combining Diacritical Marks block includes U+0358 COMBINING DOT ABOVE RIGHT, showing that this code point is part of the standard.
An official Unicode mail archive discussing newly assigned characters in Unicode 4.1.0 explicitly lists the range 0358..035C as newly assigned in that version. Since Unicode 4.1.0 was released on March 31, 2005, saying Unicode did not support the diacritic until June 2005 is incorrect.
3 sources
- Components of Unicode 4.1.0
Unicode 4.1.0 (March 31, 2005)
- Combining Diacritical Marks
0358 ◌͘ Combining Dot Above Right
- Unicode Mail List Archive: Re: Does Unicode 4.1 change NFC?
# Newly assigned in Unicode 4.1.0 ... 0358..035C ; 4.1 # [5] COMBINING DOT ABOVE RIGHT..COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW