Re: Which characters to use for (pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd)

Chris Key asked:

> I'm hoping that someone might be able to advise the correct (or at least 
> best) way to typeset the title in the following image,
> 
> http://www.lynyrdskynyrd.com/images/albums_large/pronounced.jpg


> The best rendering that I've found so far is as used by wikipedia, 
> (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd), or shown in,
> 
> 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%28pronounced_%27l%C4%95h-%27n%C3%A9rd_%27skin-%27n
%C3%A9rd%29

I think the wikipedia has this correct.

> Here, four apostrophes have been used to represent the four apostrophe 
> like symbols on the original.

And in particular, the directionless apostrophe, U+0027, rather than
the regular text apostrophe, U+2019 -- particularly as this was
set with a typewriter-style font.

This usage is based on old American dictionary practice of marking
stress this way in the front of a syllable.

The more technical pair of characters used for this stress
marking in Websters-type dictionaries nowadays is:

U+02C8 MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE
U+02CC MODIFIER LETTER LOW VERTICAL LINE

when dictionaries contrast a primary stress with the first (higher
form) and a secondary stress with the second (lower form).

> On the original, however, the first such 
> character is significantly larger and higher set than the remaining 
> three in order to denote that stress be placed on the first syllable.

Actually, I disagree. I think this was likely a design conceit
by whoever designed the text for the album cover -- and the higher
form in front of the "l" is higher simply because the "l" is
an ascender (taller) letter, whereas the other 3 letters ("n", "s",
and "n" again) are shorter.

Certainly the "pronunciation" doesn't pass muster as an actual
representation, because it wouldn't need 4 stress marks. And
the e-acutes don't follow American dictionaries, either. They
might have been a substitution for schwas that the font didn't
have.

> 
> I've had a good look through all the potentially relevant unicode 
> blocks, but haven't yet found a suitable pair of characters to use here. 
> Can anyone advise what might be suitable?

Just use the wikipedia representation. I think that is good
enough.

--Ken