Thank you, @HDE226868. I'm fumbling around the moderator tools now, but there doesn't seem to be anything new I can do (aside from some stuff with tags). Everything else is contentless. Maybe that's a good thing?
@C.M.Weimer Probably the main thing for now is that you're able to vote to delete closed questions. The reports will be more useful once we have more content getting closed and deleted, i.e., once we're in public beta.
e.g. hīc is a heavy syllable with a short vowel; the macron comes because it used to be, if I remember correctly, hīcce. (It's been a while since I thought about this stuff; hang on and I can go get my notes.)
First, the Romans actually used apices (Quintilian even talks about them being required in certain circumstances).
Second, since macrons are used in poetry to mark heavy syllables, whether the vowels are short or long, using them also to mark long vowels gives rise very, very easily to confusion (there are definitely some places in Lewis & Short where short vowels that are long by position in poetry are identified as long vowels).
Using apices keeps vowel length and syllable weight separate, thereby (ideally) preventing confusion.
Except when I forget that imprimere is only short vowels, for example. :)
The guy I learned this from had a very persuasive document about it, which of course I can't find.
I view apices like I do the 'j' for consonantal i - potentially useful, but weird to look at and only used by a small minority, which leads to confusion.
@QPaysTaxes The summary is: they're apices rather than macrons (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apex_(diacritic)) and they're on purpose. Imagine that they're macrons and then get rid of the ones that are wrong.
