Talk:Encylopædia

Recent RFD
I became aware that this redirect was the subject of a recent RFD not by being pinged (I am the creator) but through it being reviewed. This is most certainly not an "unhelpful spelling, clutter" as one user put it, nor is it "implausible" as two other put it. Regarding the tag added, this is not a "misspelling" nor a "typographical error".

Assuming good faith, I can only assume such an error is made on the basis of ignorance of the history of the English language and its alphabet as the æ ligature, called Æsc (pronounced "ash"), is very much a letter of the English alphabet. It was present actively in Old English, and continued into Middle English, falling out of use Early Modern English, likely due to type sets often lacking the character and replacing with "ae". One could argue that falling out of common use is a reason for removal, however the letter "Ȝ" (Yogh) is still used to represent the letter "Z" (and vice versa, see Menzies) and the letter "Y" is still use to represent the letter "Þ" (Thorn_(letter)) in some, albeit archaic use (although unknown to most).

The term Encylopædia is of Greek origin, and such works in English that used "ae" are traditionally represented with said ligature. I made this redirect firstly to reflect the history and because Encyclopædia is one of the words most commonly represented in this form, but also because because of the annoyance on Wikipædia of getting a red link when you correctly use a ligature. These spellings are far from wrong, they are correct, and in some cases over-correct.

I see the case of the RFD was to also redirect encyclopaedia removing the first "a". this spelling is the same as encyclopædia, just with "ae" instead of the ligature "æ". UaMaol (talk) 21:10, 27 April 2020 (UTC)