[Wikipedia-l] Character usage

[James R. Johnson]

Hello all,

            We’ve been discussing switching the accented characters in the
Old English wikipedia to macrons, and I was wondering, why does the accented
æsc character look so odd and out of place in the titles of articles?  Two
examples:

 

http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C5%AB%C3%BE_betw%C4%93onan_%C3%BE%C7%A3m_R%C
4%ABcum

 

versus:
http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BA%C3%BE_betw%C3%A9onan_%C3%BE%C7%BDm_R%C
3%ADcum

 

And the two Halloween articles:

 

http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealra_H%C3%A1lgena_%C7%BCfen

 

versus: http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ealra_H%C4%81lgena_%C7%A2fen

 

Typically, Old English is written nowadays with macrons, but they look a bit
odd on the aesc character.  If anyone knows why, please let us know.

 

James