Hebew vowel points and place-holders

Hello everyone,

I'm in the middle of translating a new Hebrew grammar into Spanish. In this particular grammar, when illustrating accented syllables, the American publisher has elected NOT to have a placeholder when showing vowel points and accented syllables. I've fiddled with my word processor, the keyboard, and various fonts in order to figure out how to do this. Somehow, they have managed it in the book. Does anyone have any idea how to do this?

I really appreciate any help you can offer!

Jonathan

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Comments

PetahChristian

Are you referring to the dotted circle?

Jonathan Beck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889237#Comment_889237

Indeed I am. That's what I mean by "placeholder".

I've noticed that using the Times New Roman font, this circle sometimes disappears, but it doesn't quite align the vowel points and accent properly

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889245#Comment_889245

I haven't seen the circle disappear, but have experienced the alignment problem. It's specific to the font. Try a different font until you find one that properly aligns the vowel points.

Jonathan Beck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889248#Comment_889248

I know about the font problem. I'm trying to specifically show vowels and accented syllables "without" using the dotted circle. Somehow, the publisher managed this - it looks like they may have just used a white space to stand instead of the dotted circle - but if I try to do the same thing in Word (i.e., change a letter color to "wite" so it is unseen, the corresponding vowel or accent is also white, no matter what I try.

It's a frustrating situation.

PetahChristian

You can attach the vowel points to the SPACE unicode characters. This will show the vowel point without any placeholder. You don't need to change the font color, as the space won't be visible.

Jonathan Beck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889252#Comment_889252

I thought I had tried that, but it didn't work for me. What's the code you're using for the white space again?

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889253#Comment_889253

It worked with a regular space, as well as these two that I tried:

PUNCTUATION SPACE
Unicode: U+2008, UTF-8: E2 80 88

NO-BREAK SPACE
Unicode: U+00A0, UTF-8: C2 A0

I'm on a Mac, if it matters.

Jonathan Beck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889263#Comment_889263

Yeah, none of those work for me, and I can't get it to work by just typing a regular space. If I could have done that, I probably wouldn't need to post here.

I'm on a PC, so that could be the difference. I'm using Word 2015. What word processor are you using? That also might be the difference.

Thanks for your help!

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889265#Comment_889265

I haven't needed to use MS Office for many years. Sorry! Perhaps someone else can try it out in Word to see if it's a word processor issue?

In the meantime, here's a few standalone vowel points that aren't combined with space characters. ֳ ֲ ֱ ִ ֵ ַ ָ ֻ ֶ

Try copying and pasting those into Word, and see if it properly displays the diacritics the way you want.

Jonathan Beck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889271#Comment_889271

Thanks for this! After investigation, it looks like this is feature characteristic of the "SBL Hebrew" font. It doesn't use the dotted circle in all fonts.

What font do you use when writing Hebrew in your word processor?

Jonathan

Jonathan Beck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889271#Comment_889271

Also, in your post above, in my browser on a PC, I see a dotted circle.

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889282#Comment_889282

Ah, I never had to download a special font, since Mac fonts provide the necessary Hebrew glyphs.

When you look at the font variation, font families definitely differ on the alignment. Most center the holam over the vav, but there are a handful that have it off to the left.

I generally use Lucida Grande, since it tends to match what many web sites use and is more recognizable to me, but I believe Times New Roman looks the best. It's an excellent choice.

Can you use a font browser on your PC to see which fonts might have the Hebrew Unicode characters? Hopefully you will have a widely used built-in font which includes standalone vowel points (without any placeholder), along with their combined glyphs, which will make for very nice typesetting.

Also, in your post above, in my browser on a PC, I see a dotted circle.

Unexpected! I don't know if that's due to the browser or the operating system, but I don't see any placeholders at all (Safari on macOS Sierra).

Brigitte Fenton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/889252#Comment_889252

Hello:

I am new to this Hebrew character stuff, so forgive me for my ignorance. We are running into the opposite outcome where we want to preserve the dotted circle being output with the pertinent accent. So in Word, we see this:

After converting the file to InDesign, we no longer see the dotted circle. All we're left with is the accent it is attached to.

Does anybody know how we can preserve the dotted circle with its accent?

thanks

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1086249#Comment_1086249

What is the format your material will be presented in? Web page? Printed page? That might have some impact on what the best recommendations are.

Brigitte Fenton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1086370#Comment_1086370

Hello:

The material will be a print output.

thanks.

PetahChristian

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1086372#Comment_1086372

Sorry, I don't use InDesign, so I can't offer any specific help.

Is the same font used both in Word and InDesign? The dotted circle glyph isn't provided in every font.

David Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1086372#Comment_1086372

One suggestion is to find a website that has what you are looking for appearance-wise and see if you can cut and paste those symbols into your word processor w/o losing the appearance. You could then create a template that you could keep open for easy access to the symbols you need.