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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 202.124.88.39 (talk) at 07:05, 15 July 2013 ($72,000 figure not supported by sources). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This redirect is about "The Tap" logogram created by Paul Mathis. For "Ћ", the Serbian letter, see Tshe.

Ћ is a logogram, which has been nicknamed "The Tap",[1] created by Paul Mathis.

Creation

Ћ was created by an Australian named Paul Mathis.[1] Mathis' decision to abbreviate 'the' into 'The Tap' came from the fact that the word 'The', despite being the most used word in the English language (British English),[2] and indeed, in American English,[3], 'the' had no symbol, unlike 'and' (which has the ampersand), which Mathis cited as being the fifth most used letter in the English language,[1] claiming that it is in 80% of all paragraphs.[4] Mathis said that he created 40 versions, before deciding on Ћ, as "it is the only one of them that is instantly recognizable as the word 'the'.[1]

Design

The design 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.[5]

Nickname

The nickname for Ћ is 'The Tap', which is due to its shape looking like a bathroom tap.[1]

Usage

App

Mathis has put $72,000 in a mobile app which features a keyboard that contains Ћ.[citation needed] At present, the design has been promoted by Google Play,[6] but rejected by Apple Inc..[7][8] Mathis wants to sell the app on the iTunes store, as he believes that would draw attention to his cause.[9] However, despite Apple's snub, he has found an alternative method to use 'The Tap'.[10]

Twitter

Mathis designed the symbol with texting and Twitter in mind. He said "The main functionality of this [the symbol] is in the texting space".[5]

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. It has also been criticized for having the same meaning as the Old English letter Thorn (þe), which can also mean the.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Ћ letter changing how we type". BBC News. 11 July 2013. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  2. ^ "The OEC: Facts about the language". Oxford Dictionaries. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  3. ^ "Word frequency data". Corpus of Contemporary American English. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  4. ^ Kennedy, John (11 July 2013). "One man's crusade to create a symbol for 'The'". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  5. ^ a b Quinn, Karl (5 July 2013). "What Th? One man's quest for a symbol solution". The Age. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  6. ^ "THE Keyboard Top 15". Google Play. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  7. ^ "Restaurateur invents new symbol for the word 'the'". ITV News. 10 July 2013. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  8. ^ "The New The". The Globe and Mail. 9 July 2013. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  9. ^ Alexander, Harriet (9 July 2013). "New letter for 'The' - Ћ - invented". The Telegraph. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  10. ^ Subramanian, Courtney (11 July 2013). "Why The Deserves a Symbol All Of Its Own". Time. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
  11. ^ Howse, Christopher (10 July 2013). "Paul Mathis's new letter: The the or not the the, that is the question". The Telegraph. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
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