" 2006 (UTC)

Ideas for improving the article
Great article. I took the liberty of replacing ˡ (U+02E1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L) in the article with ˈ (U+02C8 MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE) where it is used to indicate a stressed syllable. The former character is incorrect since although it appears as a vertical line in sans-serif fonts, it actually appears like a superscript lowercase l or a superscript 1 in serif fonts like Charis SIL and Doulos SIL. I only noticed this because I have a CSS hack that applies to all uses of the IPA template and forces a different font for them. I’m taking phonology at U. Hawaii at Mānoa so I’ll be sure to add anything interesting about Hawaiian that comes up. —  

Oh crap! Didn't even catch that.  I hope I haven't done it elsewhere.  

Well, like I said, I only noticed it because I have a CSS hack in place. I only wish that the rest of the world had the SIL IPA fonts installed... —  

Again, glad you like the article. The replacement symbol you used looked alright to me, but so did the original symbol. It's a stretch to claim ""[t]he former character is incorrect"" on the basis of its appearance in fonts that 99.99% of users do not have. Most people have never heard of the Summer Institute for Linguistics. The character that I used to mark syllable stress is the one that Wikipedia presents for use in the IPA list of symbols below the edit box. So if you feel you have a ""better"" symbol, then you should contact Wikipedians who are in a position to consider implementing your suggestion(s). You might try Brion Vibber. If you learn something new about Hawaiian phonology at UH, do let us know. But remember, Wikipedia does not want anything that is not already published. So if it's ""new"", it might be unpublished, and therefore undesirable under Wikipedia policy.   

The font used to display the characters is unimportant. Their character encodings are specific. On the basis of the two Unicode names, I argue that U+02E1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L is inappropriate as the stress marker in IPA. Checking the appropriate Unicode chart on their website I find that U+02C8 MODIFIER LETTER VERTICAL LINE is listed under the section “Miscellaneous phonetic modifiers” with the comment “primary stress, downstep; precedes letter or syllable modified”. On the other hand, U+02E1 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L is given in the section “Additions based on 1989 IPA” just below U+02E0 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL GAMMA which has the comment “these modifier letters are occasionally used in transcription of affricates”. So it’s fairly clear that the Unicode standard makes a distinction between their intended purposes. I note that in the bottom of the edit box the two are given in sequence, with U+02C8 immediately following U+02E1. It’s easily possible to press the first of the two accidentally. I will bring this up at m:Help talk:Special characters and ask someone to reorder them for clarity. —  

Your explanation and argument sounds good. I don't know the layout of the ""insert box"" characters on other users' screens. When I edit, the IPA characters are displayed in two lines. The first line ends with tiny lowercase superscripts: h, w, a j-like character, gamma, ""lefty"" glottal, n. The second line begins with the character I used for stress mark, followed by other stress marks, length mark, something too obscure to make out, a mid-height black square (apparently used to mark the end of a series of related symbols), and then the line ends with the double-curly-bracketed IPA. Based on your explanation, it appears that the first line of IPA characters is broken in a way that misled me into thinking that the last member of the series of superscripts is the first member of a series of stress marks. Bad line break. And there is no mid-height black square, nor significant white space, separating the superscript series from the stress mark series. Not seeing that previously, I used the first mark because it looks the same as the second, but darker. Of course, it also happened because a tiny superscripted sans-serif L looks nearly identical to a tiny superscripted vertical line.

If you have the motivation, maybe you can suggest more than just reordering in your communication with the Special Characters people. The addition of a separation character between the series of superscripts and the series of stress marks will help. Here's my best suggestion to offer on this matter - persuade the Special Characters folks to implement appropriate new text for the ho