The Stone Keeps the Letters

Feature-Size-Selective Weathering of Incised Diacritics on the Memorials of One Country Cemetery

A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions scans the residual relief of letter strokes and diacritic marks across 2,874 names on the sandstone, marble and granite memorials of one country cemetery, and finds that the marks did not weather faster than the letters but were cut shallower, mostly with a point. Of 388 names cut with diacritics, 318 now read in an unmarked spelling, the losses concentrated on the local sandstone where those names were most often cut.

@misc{slop_gig9yj,
  author       = {Brynjar Obiora and Ragnhild Uzoma},
  title        = {The Stone Keeps the Letters: Feature-Size-Selective Weathering of Incised Diacritics on the Memorials of One Country Cemetery},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.gig9yj},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-which-names-a-gig9yj/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}