Editing Digamma (section)

==Glyph development==
[[File:NAMA Alphabet grec.jpg|thumb|The alphabet on a [[black figure]] vessel, with a square-C digamma.]]

===Epigraphy===
Digamma was derived from Phoenician waw, which was shaped roughly like a Y (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Phoenician waw.svg|x14px]]</span>). Of the two Greek reflexes of waw, digamma retained the alphabetic position, but had its shape modified to <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma oblique.svg|x16px]]</span>, while the [[upsilon]] retained the original shape but was placed in a new alphabetic position. Early Crete had an archaic form of digamma somewhat closer to the original Phoenician, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma 02.svg|x16px]]</span>, or a variant with the stem bent sidewards (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma 09.svg|x16px]]</span>). The shape <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma oblique.svg|x16px]]</span>, during the archaic period, underwent a development parallel to that of [[epsilon]] (which changed from <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Epsilon archaic.svg|x16px]]</span> to "E", with the arms becoming orthogonal and the lower end of the stem being shed off). For digamma, this led to the two main variants of classical "F" and square <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma angular.svg|x16px]]</span>.<ref name="jeffery">{{cite book |last=Jeffery |first=Lilian H. |title=The local scripts of archaic Greece |place=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon |year=1961 |pages=24f |oclc=312031 }}</ref>

The latter of these two shapes became dominant when used as a numeral, with "F" only very rarely employed in this function. However, in Athens, both of these were avoided in favour of a number of alternative numeral shapes (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 01.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 02.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 03.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 04.svg|x16px|Ϝ]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 05.svg|x16px|5]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma numeric 06.svg|x16px|6]]</span>).<ref name="tod">{{cite journal|last=Tod|first=Marcus N.|title=The alphabetic numeral system in Attica|journal=Annual of the British School at Athens|volume=45|year=1950|pages=126–139|doi=10.1017/s0068245400006730|s2cid=128438705 }}</ref>

=== Early handwriting ===
[[File:P. Oxy. LXVI 4499.jpg|thumb|right|A fragment of [[Papyrus 115]], showing the number "{{overline|{{lang|grc|χιϛ}}}}" (616, the "[[Number of the beast|Number of the Beast]]"), with a C-shaped digamma.]]

In cursive handwriting, the square-C form developed further into a rounded form resembling a "C" (found in papyrus manuscripts as <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 01.svg|x16px]]</span>, on coins sometimes as <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 08.svg|x16px]]</span>). It then developed a downward tail at the end (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 02.svg|x16px]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 03.svg|x16px]]</span>) and finally adopted a shape like a Latin "s" (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 05.svg|x16px]]</span>)<ref>{{cite book|last=Gardthausen|first=Victor Emil|author-link=Victor Gardthausen|title=Griechische Palaeographie, Vol. 2|place=Leipzig|publisher=B.G. Teubner|year=1879|page=367}}</ref> These cursive forms are also found in stone inscriptions in late antiquity.<ref name="tod"/>

=== Conflation with the στ ligature ===
[[File:Greek minuscule numerals Cod.Const.Pal.Vet.f96r.svg|thumb|right|Two instances of s-shaped numeral digamma in the number "9996 4/6" ({{lang|grc|{{overline|͵θϡϟϛ}} δʹ ϛʹ}}) in a minuscule mathematical manuscript, c.1100 AD. Below, a phrase containing two instances of the ligature "στ" ("{{lang|grc|ἔσται τὸ στερεὸν}}"), still distinguished from the numeral.]]
In the ninth and tenth centuries, the cursive shape digamma was visually conflated with a [[ligature (typography)|ligature]] of [[sigma]] (in its historical "lunate" form) and [[tau]] (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek uncial Sigma.svg|x14px]]</span> + <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek uncial Tau.svg|x14px]]</span> = <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 07.svg|x16px]]</span>, <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 06.svg|x16px]]</span>).<ref>Gardthausen, ''Griechische Paleographie,'' p.238; {{cite book|first=Edward M.|last=Thompson|title=Handbook of Greek and Latin palaeography|url=https://archive.org/details/apl0171.0001.001.umich.edu|location=New York|publisher=D. Appleton|year=1893|page=[https://archive.org/details/apl0171.0001.001.umich.edu/page/104 104]}}</ref> The στ-ligature had become common in [[minuscule Greek|minuscule]] handwriting from the 9th century onwards. Both closed (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 07.svg|x16px]]</span>) and open (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Digamma cursive 04.svg|x16px]]</span>) forms were subsequently used without distinction both for the ligature and for the numeral. The ligature took on the name of "''stigma''" or "''sti''", and the name stigma is today applied to it both in its textual and in the numeral function. The association between its two functions as a numeral and as a sign for "st" became so strong that in modern typographic practice in Greece, whenever the ϛʹ sign itself is not available, the letter sequences στʹ or ΣΤʹ are used instead for the number 6.

=== Typography ===
In western typesetting during the modern era, the numeral symbol was routinely represented by the same character as the ''stigma'' ligature (ϛ). In normal text, this ligature together with numerous others continued to be used widely until the early nineteenth century, following the style of earlier minuscule handwriting, but ligatures then gradually dropped out of use. The ''stigma'' ligature was among those that survived longest, but it too became obsolete in print after the mid-19th century. Today it is used only to represent the numeric digamma, and never to represent the sequence στ in text.

Along with the other special numeric symbols koppa and sampi, numeric digamma/stigma normally has no distinction between uppercase and lowercase forms,<ref name="holton">{{cite book|first1=David|last1=Holton|first2=Peter|last2=Mackridge|first3=Irene|last3=Philippaki-Warburton|title=Greek: a comprehensive grammar of the modern language|place=London|publisher=Routledge|year=1997|page=105|isbn=0-415-10001-1}}</ref> (while other alphabetic letters can be used as numerals in both cases). Distinct uppercase versions were occasionally used in the 19th century. Several different shapes of uppercase stigma can be found, with the lower end either styled as a small curved S-like hook (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Stigma uc S-shaped.svg|x16px]]</span>), or as a straight stem, the latter either with a serif (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Koppa-Stigma uc.svg|x16px]]</span>) or without one (<span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Koppa-Stigma uc 2.svg|x16px]]</span>). An alternative uppercase stylization in some twentieth-century fonts is <span style="background-color: white;">[[File:Greek Stigma uc ST.svg|x16px]]</span>, visually a ligature of Roman-style uppercase C and T.

The characters used for numeric digamma/stigma are distinguished in modern print from the character used to represent the ancient alphabetic digamma, the letter for the [w] sound. This is rendered in print by a Latin "F", or sometimes a variant of it specially designed to fit in typographically with Greek (<span style="font-family:serif">Ϝ</span>). It has a modern lowercase form (<span style="font-family:serif">ϝ</span>) that typically differs from Latin "f" by having two parallel horizontal strokes like the uppercase character, with the vertical stem often being somewhat slanted to the right or curved, and usually descending below the [[baseline (typography)|baseline]]. This character is used in Greek [[epigraphy]] to transcribe the text of ancient inscriptions that contain "Ϝ", and in linguistics and historical grammar when describing reconstructed proto-forms of Greek words that contained the sound {{IPA|/w/}}.