double daggers

[lone gunman]

what is the proper name for the double dagger symbol,used to indicate footnotes?

[Quizmonster]

Click http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~dparrish/footnotes.html and read Line 7. It is called precisely what you called it yourself...a 'double dagger'! It has been so named since the 1700s, as a matter of interest.

[archbishop]

Quizzy ,what lone gunman wants is another name for double daggers as this was a question in yesterdays MoS crossword. No I didn't get it.

[smorodina]

Apparently it's also known as a 'dieses'.

[Quizmonster]

Ah! Thanks for the enlightenment, AB. Perhaps the Gunman might have offered some such hint...maybe even a letter or two of the answer! As Smorodina suggests, the Greek name is 'diesis' (plural 'dieses' = more than one double-dagger). The original meaning of the word is a quarter-tone in music.

[sft42]

Sorry to disagree with you QM but the term "diesis" in music originally came about after use by Philolaus (fl. c. 400 BC), as quoted by Boethius who used it to describe the interval that is normally known as a limma or Pythagorean minor semitone, with the ratio 256:243 = ~90.22499567 cents.

Much more confusingly the term has had at least 7 different uses throughout history all slightly different but when the term is unqualified, these days it generally is meant to refer to the ratio 128:125 = [2 3 5]^[7 0 -3] = ~41.05885841 (~411/17) cents.

[sft42]

Came across this link for anyone still interested in the original question!

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Diesis.html

[archbishop]

sft42 - were not.

[Quizmonster]

I'm not quite sure what it is that you're disagreeing with me about, Sft! I simply quoted the basic Greek etymology as provided by The Oxford English Dictionary. I didn't really see much point in listing any of the massive musical detail such as the OED also provided, since the question was about printing-conventions, not music. But what the hey! Cheers anyway.

[sft42]

Looking bacl at it now I was being overly pedantic QM..you said quarter tone and it's really a semi tone.....not much to some, a lot to us muso's though :>)

[lone gunman]

cheers for all your help but i actually got the answer later on sunday night!didn't realise i was going to spark off such a semantic debate!!!!!good to know i have such intelligent back up!anyway as descarte said it hink, therefore i'll f**K off home now.bye