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My Iconic Alphabet » 1
Principal Considerations
After a first attempt, I noticed that my characters were so similar as to be indistinguishable, as well as difficult to write quickly. I decided then to start again by first considering some basic principles.
- Phoneticism. That's a given. I wanted one letter for one sound. Nothing like 'c,' 'q,' and 'x' in my alphabet.
- Universality. This is what the linguists were hoping to achieve when they first developed the phonetic alphabet. They wanted a transcription system that could describe sounds in any language. I wanted the same for my alphabet, but I also had to recognize the difference between phones and phonemes.
If I made an alphabet of every possible phone, it would be huge and impractical. If I made an alphabet of phonemes, I would have to specify it to a language, and that makes it not-so-universal. I tried to resolve this dilemma by designing an alphabet that is expandable to meet the needs of whatever language it is transcribing.
- Simplicity. Languages and alphabets change over time. People usually simplify, so if I were to make my characters complicated, they would eventually devolve into more simple versions. Why not start simple in the first place?
- Medium. Cuneiform was written in clay, so the letters consisted of wedges. Runes were scratched on stone, so the letters consisted of straight lines. With computers, medium doesn't matter, but with handwriting on paper, I assumed a pen, pencil, or brush would be used, so curved characters were OK.
- Writability. Would my alphabet be written up, down, left, or right? (This would determine if the characters were tall or wide.) Would lines of text stack up, down, left, or right? Of the 8 possible combinations, I tried to pick one objectively and practically.
About 90 percent of people are right-handed, so I would want right- or down-running text, stacking down or right, respectively (these directions prevent your hand from smudging the preceding text). Our two eyes are placed horizontally with respect to each other, giving us wide vision instead of tall, so at first glance it's easier to read horizontal-running text than vertical-running. Consequently, I chose right-running text, which therefore stacks downward. This means my characters would be tall instead of wide (so they can be written close together).
Of course, I've ended up defining a system that happens to be just like English. Accuse me of being Euro-centric, but it seems to be a logical, practical system.
- Readability. Studies have shown that lower-case letters are easier to read than upper-case letters. This is because lower-case letters have ascenders (bdfhklt) and descenders (gjpqy), whereas upper-case letters are block shaped and therefore are less distinguishable at a glance. I decided to make letters with a base symbol, modified by ascenders and descenders (e.g., o » pqbd).
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