Beta Code
Beta Code was a method of representing, using only ASCII characters, the characters, accents, and formatting found in ancient Greek texts (and other ancient languages). Its aim was to be not merely a romanization of the Greek alphabet, but to represent faithfully a wide variety of source texts – including formatting as well as rare or idiosyncratic characters. For most applications, it has been obsoleted by unicode.
Beta Code was developed by David W. Packard in the late 1970s and adopted by Thesaurus Linguae Graecae in 1981. It became the standard for encoding polytonic Greek and was also used by a number of other projects such as the Perseus Project, the Packard Humanities Institute, the Duke collection of Documentary Papyri, and the Greek Epigraphy Project at Cornell and Ohio State University. Beta Code can be easily converted to a variety of systems for display, most notably Unicode.[1] Most of these projects have since converted their data to unicode. For example, Perseus originally encoded all its Ancient Greek texts using Beta code,[2] but now releases them as unicode.
Encoding
Greek alphabet
| Upper case | Beta Code | Character name | Lower case | Beta Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Α | *A | Alpha | α | A |
| Β | *B | Beta | β | B |
| Γ | *G | Gamma | γ | G |
| Δ | *D | Delta | δ | D |
| Ε | *E | Epsilon | ε | E |
| Ϝ | *V | Digamma | ϝ | V |
| Ζ | *Z | Zeta | ζ | Z |
| Η | *H | Eta | η | H |
| Θ | *Q | Theta | θ | Q |
| Ι | *I | Iota | ι | I |
| Κ | *K | Kappa | κ | K |
| Λ | *L | Lambda | λ | L |
| Μ | *M | Mu | μ | M |
| Ν | *N | Nu | ν | N |
| Ξ | *C | Xi | ξ | C |
| Ο | *O | Omicron | ο | O |
| Π | *P | Pi | π | P |
| Ρ | *R | Rho | ρ | R |
| Σ | *S | Medial Sigma | σ | S, S1 |
| Final Sigma | ς | S, S2, J | ||
| Ϲ | *S3 | Lunate Sigma | ϲ | S3 |
| Τ | *T | Tau | τ | T |
| Υ | *U | Upsilon | υ | U |
| Φ | *F | Phi | φ | F |
| Χ | *X | Chi | χ | X |
| Ψ | *Y | Psi | ψ | Y |
| Ω | *W | Omega | ω | W |
Notes
- Instead of upper-case Latin letters, lower-case Latin letters may also be used (e.g. a for α and *a for Α).
- The TLG Beta Code Manual uses upper-case ASCII letters to represent Greek letters. A variant (used by the Perseus Project) uses lower-case ASCII letters instead. In both cases, the unadorned ASCII letter represents a lower-case Greek letter, and an asterisk must be added to indicate an upper-case Greek letter.
- In general, one encoding character S for Greek sigma is sufficient; it is interpreted as a final sigma at the end of words or when followed by punctuation, and as a medial sigma in other positions. In cases where this auto-disambiguation is not correct, the specific codes S1 and S2 are available.
- Some representations use J for the final sigma and S for the medial sigma.
Punctuation
| Punctuation | Beta Code | Name |
|---|---|---|
| . | . | Period |
| , | , | Comma |
| · | : | Colon (Ano Stigme) |
| ; | ; | Question Mark |
| ’ | ' | Apostrophe |
| ‐ | - | Hyphen |
| — | _ | Dash |
| ʹ | # | Numeral (Keraia) |
Accents and diacritics
| Diacritic | Beta Code | Name | Examples | Coded as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ̓ | ) | Smooth breathing | ἐν | E)N |
| ̔ | ( | Rough breathing | ὁ, οἱ | O(, OI( |
| ́ | / | Acute accent | πρός | PRO/S |
| ͂ | = | Circumflex accent | τῶν | TW=N |
| ̀ | \ | Grave accent | πρὸς | PRO\S |
| ̈ | + | Diaeresis | προϊέναι | PROI+E/NAI |
| ͅ | | | Iota subscript | τῷ | TW=| |
| ̄ | & | Macron | μαχαίρᾱς | MAXAI/RA&S |
| ̆ | ' | Breve | μάχαιρᾰ | MA/XAIRA' |
References
- A Beta to Unicode reference guide has been developed by the TLG project (http://www.tlg.uci.edu/encoding/quickbeta.pdf)
- "Perseus Help and Information Center". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2022-12-26.