Thomas Chan wrote: > GETA MARK is also ambiguous to Chinese readers; an "M"-sized WHITE SQUARE > or WHITE CIRCLE (or LARGE CIRCLE) are more familiar. >
Thomas is right, the Geta mark is a Japanese innovation, and is totally unknown in Chinese contexts. > I don't think the distinction > between #2 and #3 need or should be standardized at this level--it is up > to a convention that the author should establish with the reader, as with > any specialized notation I'd probably agree with you on this. > but there is certainly a difference between #1 > (author succeeds in writing but reader fails in viewing) and #2/#3 (author > fails in writing). > Definitely ! In modern printed Chinese texts, a missing character (for example when transcribing an ancient manuscript, or deliberately censoring rude words in a novel) is almost alway shown as a full-size hollow square (i.e. taking up the same space as a CJK ideograph). In digital texts on the internet I have noticed that this "missing/illegible/censored ideograph glyph" is usually represented by one of the following characters : 1. U+56D7 �� (a rare CJK Ideograph) 2. U+3007 �Z (IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO) 3. U+25A1 �� (WHITE SQUARE) These are all unsatisfactory : U+56D7 and U+3007 simply do not have the semantics of "missing/illegible/censored ideograph glyph", and should not be used as such. The White Square is a more interesting case. As the White Square character is simply defined by its shape, and has no inherant meaning, it could be used to mean whatever is wanted. The problem is that although Chinese fonts such as MingLiU or SimSun-18030 draw the White Square glyph as a full-size hollow square that looks like the "missing/illegible/censored ideograph glyph", a non-Chinese font may not draw it at all like the "missing/illegible/censored ideograph glyph" - try it in Arial Unicode MS for example. I have always felt that there was a need for a specific Unicode character to represent the "missing/illegible/censored ideograph glyph" that is frequently encountered in Chinese texts. I believe there is similar need to encode the square ink blot mark (Chinese moding �n�B) that is frequently found in woodblock editions in which the blocks have been recarved, and an ideograph in the original block is no longer legible. This symbol is usually represented by U+25A0 �� (BLACK SQUARE) in digital texts on the internet, but has the same limitations as does using the White Square for the "missing/illegible/censored ideograph glyph". Andrew West
