Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 November 2

= November 2 =

How to write Arabic roots
I suppose such possibilities may exist: KTB, K-T-B, ktb, k-t-b, √KTB, √K-T-B, √ktb, √k-t-b, not to mention italics or boldface. What are accepted ways? I certainly saw k-t-b in scientific publications but I'm not sure about other variants. Examples from non-Semitic studies are welcome as well. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 09:35, 2 November 2015 (UTC)


 * In the Latin script, or in the Arabic script?
 * In the Arabic script, the most popular way is to write: ك ت ب, as opposed to the word: كتب . See this root in the Arabic Wiktionary.
 * In the Latin script - no rule exists (just as no rule exists in the other Semitic scripts), although the most popular way is to write k-t-b (see the chapter "Triconsonantal roots" in our article Semitic root), following Hebrew (see this root in the Hebrew Wiktionary), although √ktb is also rather popular (at least in Hebrew). HOOTmag (talk) 13:41, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, probably the usage of √ is from Hebrew studies, I saw it somewhere in such context...--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:06, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I've always seen it only as k-t-b in Arabic. Adam Bishop (talk) 13:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is the most widespread way, but in Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics I saw the KTB (no italics) style as well, partucularly in the article about the word Arab. Once I saw the ktb style in another article. --Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 18:06, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Word placement
What is the name for the occurrence in typography when a certain word is in the same place on different lines by happenstance? Th4n3r (talk) 20:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Other than "coincidence"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:11, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Not sure if it was an article, but I'm looking for something similar to River (typography). Th4n3r (talk) 20:23, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * When I was working as a proofreader, it was normal to mark occurrences of the same word, or of hyphens, at the ends of three (or more) consecutive lines of justified type so that the typesetter could break these up; but I don't recall that we had a specific term for these occurrences. (We did refer to rivers as rivers, though.) Deor (talk) 20:40, 2 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Here's a discussion about the issue on StackExchange, and someone has even written a script to detect them in LuaTex! Two fun words that cover the beginning-of-line and line-end cases at least roughly are homeoarchy and homeoteleuton. I doubt you'll find a single word that precisely covers the general case like "river" does, but those two near-misses may be helpful. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:42, 2 November 2015 (UTC)