Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)

En réponse à Joseph Fatula :


>http://www.janbrett.com/alphabet/cursive_alphabet_main.htm
>(This is what "cursive" writing looks like in America.)
Well, I'm gonna reply here to all the people who asked about the cursive I
learned. It's quite remote from that. The small letters are similar (but I
would constantly confuse the q and the g as written there. I was taught the
q with a bar as descender, just like the p, and the p's we learn are open
on the right, instead of having a loop. Also, we have three different sizes
for ascenders: x-height for m, n, a, etc..., twice the x-height for t and
d, and three times the x-height for l and f for instance), but the capital
letters are extremely different. In the handwriting I was taught, they look
more like ornate forms of the block letters, with loops and such (my H, Z,
I, N, M and S are extremely different from the ones of this cursive. Also,
my G's are also different, looking more like a big version of my g's, a
little like the Z of that American cursive). The only letter that is really
similar but not looking like the block letter is the capital Q. Like many
people, it took me years to figure out why the Q should look like a 2 ;)))
. Since I've figured it out, I've modified my capital Q slightly so that
it'll look a bit more like a Q ;)) .

Check at the bottom of this page:
http://www.momes.net/education/ecriture/graphismes.html to see an example
of the cursive taught in France (the small letters are exactly as I was
taught them, as are the capitals except for Q and Z. My Q looks like a 2,
but my Z looks more like the block letter rather than the small cursive,
and has a small tilde in the middle of the diagonal line).

Now to the cursive as I write it nowadays. As John noted, it has quite
evolved since I learned to write, but it stayed cursive and connected. The
main evolution has been that my cursive has become "rounder". For instance,
the ascender bars of my t's and d's have become loops (they have also
grown, and now my t's and d's are just as tall as l's and f's). My p's have
gained a full loop again, making them essentially mirror images of my q's.
On the other hand, the loops of my l's and f's don't close anymore, and
I've abandoned most of the ornate loops present in my capitals. And the
most important thing is that I don't begin writing my characters from the
baseline.

By the way, very interesting story. My experience is similar, although I
only taught myself to read, not to write. I always was conscious of all the
different types of typed letters (the letters in books didn't look like the
letters in comic books, which also didn't look like the letters on bottles
and in commercials, which also didn't look like the letters in children's
books). Maybe I was so much more conscious of all the variety of typed
letters and their differences that I didn't think of using them as example,
since I didn't see a unifying principle I could have used as example...

Now, it may be where my taste for typography and calligraphy has evolved
from ;))) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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