Hi, Dennis,

> I think PTS has a character which looks
> like an 'n' but with a tail like a 'g'. Some character sets don't
> have a '.' below 'm', while another have both. I would like to
> know how are they different and whether a standard set has evolved.

The PTS dictionary is rather old (c. 1925). I just checked the U
Chicago online version and I see what you mean. That n with a g tail
is a symbol that linguists use, but I've never seen it used for Pali
recently. Most books nowadays use m-underdot or m-overdot for that
sound. That's the only one I can think of where there is variation.
The other sounds have pretty consistent representations.

(Actually if you look at 19th century publications such as the
Sacred Books of the East series, you'll see even more strange ways
of representing various Indic sounds.)

Derek.