Talk:ſeveral

Deletion debate
This is defined as an obsolete spelling of "several". In fact, it is nothing of the sort. That is simply what s looked like before the nineteenth century except at the ends of words. Unless hundreds of thousands of other such "spelling variants" that use the non-terminal s are to be admitted, it makes little sense to allow this one. At the moment ſeveral is the only word listed among English obsolete spellings. Also allowing this entry would by implication disqualify any entries that have only been recorded with the ſ. --82.0.9.23 17:06, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I broadly agree, we should probably have a policy against these, in the same way that we have equus, but not EQUUS, EQVVS, or even eqvvs. Possibly move this to the Beer Parlour, then delete it when it is official a 'bad entry title', unless we already have such a policy. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. See also Category:English terms spelled with ſ. There is no reason that attestable terms written with the long ess ought to be omitted (of course, I agree that they ought not to be lemmatised). FWIW, I disagree with the ban on Latin entries spelt differently from the standard; whilst the standardised spellings ought to be the lemmata, disallowing even soft-redirect entries for variably-spelt Latin terms imposes an artificial uniformity on the language, and is quite at variance with the general descriptive ethos of the English Wiktionary. †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 17:23, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Redirect at best. This isn't an alternative spelling of several, it's a typographical alternative, they both have the same spelling. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:26, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd go for RFV, unless we have lacking technical means to find citations of this spelling in which case I'd Keep until such a tool comes along and we can show that if the spelling did exist it would likely fail RFV. Conrad.Irwin 17:27, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As suggested, I've copied the discussion (as it was when I last refreshed) to Beer_parlour. --82.0.9.134 17:32, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Redirect. I agree with the main thrust of the argument: this is not a variant spelling, but merely a variant typographical form. < class="latinx">Ƿidsiþ 17:41, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This would seem to be contrary to the policy on upper/lower case forms. They are merely typographic differences but we don't allow them even as redirects (I think we should, but this is a seperate matter). Conrad.Irwin 18:19, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed, upper/lower case forms is a good analogy. But really, allowing two kinds of s is a bit like allowing separate entries for "script a" <ɑ> and printed a . There have never been alternative spellings, just different ways of drawing an ess. --82.0.9.134 18:53, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The only reason we don't allow redirects from capital->lowercase is that we want to be able to distinguish separate words (god v. God and many English v. German words). I don't think this a problem here, however, so I think a redirect would be fine for this case. --Bequw → ¢ • τ 19:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As a further point, I notice all the entries under Category:English terms spelled with ſ were created by a single user from words in the William Jones quote under ſeveral. Surely someone getting a bit carried away? --86.25.237.175 20:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect as a typographic variant. (We Hebrew editors already redirect entry titles containing the hyphen-minus to the corresponding ones with the maqaf, and regular double quotation marks to gershayim. That's fyi, not as an analogy, as it's not a good one.) &#x200b;— msh210 ℠ 22:53, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Redirect. —Internoob (Disc.•Cont.) 03:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

For anyone (I’m thinking Conrad.Irwin) who doubts the verifiability of this spelling, see ; >99% of those 12,525 hits are almost certainly scannos of undefined:. Regarding other considerations, I shall reply in the Beer Parlour. †  ﴾(u):Raifʻhār (t):Doremítzwr﴿ 05:12, 17 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I find myself having second thoughts. "All words in all languages", this is a word in English. I think possibly this should be kept and we should try and come up with a policy decision and follow it. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Redirected, the Beer Parlour discussion may help us come up with another solution (or it may not). Mglovesfun (talk) 18:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect: not an obsolete spelling, only an obsolete way of writing this s. A redirect may be useful when pasting here words copied from old texts found on sites using this Unicode character (this case should be rather exceptional). Lmaltier 22:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)