Ye Olde “The”
or: there’s already a glyph for that
An Australian named Paul Mathis has scored some attention from designers and typographers of late by suggesting that “the”, as the most-used word in the English language, is too long to type, and should in fact be two characters shorter. To that end, he’s invested a significant amount of money and effort to invent and promote a new typographic glyph: “Ћ” is to “the” as “&” is to “and”. Usage of Ћ new character would look something like it does in this sentence.
The word ‘and’ is only the fifth-most used word in English and it has its own symbol – the ampersand. Isn’t it time we accorded the same respect to ‘the’? — Paul Mathis
If he’d done a bit of lexicographic and/or typographic research to begin with, he would have discovered that there are already at least two glyphs equivalent to the English digraph “th”, namely Θ and Þ (lowercase θ and þ). The first of these, the Greek theta, gets quite a workout in the math and science world, and it would probably be a bit overloaded if it meant “the” as well. The second glyph comes from Middle English — Icelandic is the only language that still uses it — and is called “thorn”. The character “þ” is pronounced like the “th” in “the” or “that”, but not “think” or “thanks”.
In fact, thorn already has a strong claim to the throne of “the”, which in Middle English was abbreviated “þᵉ”, with a superscript-e. It is this spelling, in fact, which leads to the modern-day construction “Ye Olde Whatever Shoppe”. Over time, the written thorn gradually lost its ascender, looking much like the wynn “ƿ” glyph. In the early days of English printing, typographic fonts often lacked the characters “þ” and “ƿ”, so typographers used the “y” as a substitute. Thus the abbreviation “þᵉ” became “ƿᵉ” and then “yᵉ” although it was — and is — still pronounced “the”. Still with me? Excellent.
If history isn’t enough to catapult “þ” over “Ћ”, perhaps aesthetics will do the trick. “Ћ” is too top-heavy to sit in þ middle of a sentence without being disruptive. Packing more ink in a similar area, it has more typographic weight than it should, leading þ eye to catch more heavily on it. All told, it draws more attention to itself than a humble article deserves.
Þere’s also a convenience argument to be made. Þorn is already in a lot of typefaces, while “Ћ” would have quite some distance to go just to catch up. In fact, I think I’ve just discovered þ one downside to þorn: If we spell it with its own glyph, it might be just a tad too easy to read wrong.
If all þose arguments aren’t enough for you, just imagine all þ wonderful applications of þorn in emoticons. If, after all þˢ, you’re not convinced, all I can say is 8Þ.
