User:Matty.007/sandbox/Ћ

Ћ is the Serbian Cyrillic character Tshe, which has been nicknamed "The Tap" by Australian restaurateur Paul Mathis, and used by him as a symbol for the English word 'the.'

Creation
Mathis' decision to abbreviate 'the' as Ћ came from the fact that the word 'the,' despite being the most used word in the English language (British English), and indeed, in American English,, had no symbol, unlike 'and' (which has the ampersand), which Mathis cited as being the fifth most used letter in the English language, claiming that it is in 80% of all paragraphs. Mathis said that he created 40 symbols, before deciding on Ћ, as "it is the only one of them that is instantly recognizable as the word 'the'.

Mathis' symbol for 'the' is the same as the Serbian Cyrillic letter Ћ (Tshe), but Mathis says that this was a co-incidence, and that he only discovered Tshe part of the way through his design process.

Usage
Mathis has developed a mobile app which features a keyboard that contains Ћ. It is available on Google Play, but has attracted little interest.

Mathis promotes the symbol with texting and Twitter in mind. He said "The main functionality of this [the symbol] is in the texting space".

Criticism
Mathis has been criticized for claiming to create a letter which is too similar, indeed, identical to Tshe, a letter in the Serbian alphabet. He has also been criticized for ignoring the existing Middle English symbol þͤ for 'the' (a thorn with a superscript), and its Early Modern form yͤ (as in Ye Olde).