A sign/abbreviation for "magister"

[Michael Everson via Unicode]

This is no different the Irish name McCoy which can be written MᶜCoy where the raising of the c is actually just decorative, though perhaps it was once an abbreviation for Mac. In some styles you can see a line or a dot under the raised c. This is purely decorative. 

I would encode this as Mʳ if you wanted to make sure your data contained the abbreviation mark. It would not make sense to encode it as M=ͬ or anything else like that, because the “r” is not modifying a dot or a squiggle or an equals sign. The dot or squiggle or equals sign has no meaning at all. And I would not encode it as Mr͇, firstly because it would never render properly and you might as well encode it as Mr. or M:r, and second because in the IPA at least that character indicates an alveolar realization in disordered speech. (Of course it could be used for anything.)

I like palaeographic renderings of text very much indeed, and in fact remain in conflict with members of the UTC (who still, alas, do NOT communicate directly about such matters, but only in duelling ballot comments) about some actually salient representations required for medievalist use. The squiggle in your sample, Janusz, does not indicate anything; it is only a decoration, and the abbreviation is the same without it.

Michael Everson

> On 28 Oct 2018, at 17:28, Janusz S. Bień via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> 
> For me only the latter seems acceptable. Using COMBINING LATIN SMALL
> LETTER R is a natural idea, but I feel uneasy using just EQUALS SIGN as
> the base character. However in the lack of a better solution I can live
> with it :-)