### The Miracle of Marxloh

The decorative typefaces are applied in different shops such as bakeries, cafes, and hairdressers. However, most of them are used in signs of wedding dress shops (Figure 19). To contextualise this, it is worth considering the history of the bridal gown industry in Duisburg-Marxloh: When the coal mines and steelworks started closing in the 1970s, the district was affected by major structural changes for the years to come. To escape from misery, the community invented a new industry, which is wedding dress tailoring. There are 25 wedding dress shops and about 27 adjunct business (without gastronomy) such as bakeries, hairdressers, photo studios, and invitation card printers on the intersection of Weseler Straße, Kaiser-Friedrich-Straße and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße with customers coming from all over Europe (cf. Gorres, Sucato, and Yıldırım, 2010, p. 246).

### The Typefaces

Looking at the typefaces, it occurs that some of them have been used widely in famous 1960s and 1970s Turkish movie posters.<fnref n="12" /> Let us have a closer look at the typefaces used in the bridal fashion shops and their use in film posters in the four following examples.

#### Pretorian

The wedding dress shop “Topkapı Gelinlik” on the Weseler Straße in Duisburg-Marxloh (Figure 20) uses the typeface *Pretorian* horizontally in the words “KUYUMCU,” “TOPKAPI,” “GELİNLİK” as well as vertically framing the door in the words “JUWELIER” and “ABENDKLEIDER”. (The shop name “Topkapı Gelinlik” at the top is set in *Cooper Black*.) *Pretorian* is an early 20th-century British typeface, released by the foundry P.M. Shanks and Sons, Ltd., The Patent Type Foundry in London, and received by Letraset as rub-down type in 1976¹³ (“Letraset Katalog” 1978, p. 87). *Pretorian* is used multiple times<fnref n="14" /> for the title designs in movie posters such as *Sultan Gelin (The Sultan's Bride)* 1973, *Ölmeyen Şarkı (The song that does not die)*) 1977, *Kibar Feyzo (Gentle Feyzo)*) 1978 or *Aşkın Gözyaşı (Tears of Love)*) 1979.

#### Arnold Böcklin

The wedding dress shop “Stil” (Figure 21) uses the art nouveau typeface *Arnold Böcklin*. It is named after the Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin

<footnote n="12">12. Many thanks to Gülşah Edis Kış for the reference to film posters and the fruitful discussions on the use of typefaces in the city of Istanbul.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">13. Cf. https://fontsinuse.com/\index{typeface}typefaces/26150/pretorian (retrieved 30.09.20).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">14. The online archive of the “Center for Turkish Cinema Studies” (www.tsa.org.tr) shows 12 movies using *Pretorian* between 1960–1979. (retrieved 30.09.20).</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_122.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 20. Top left to bottom right: “Topkapı Gelinlik” Wedding Dress Shop in Duisburg-Marxloh, Movie Posters: *Sultan Gelin* 1973, *Ölmeyen Şarkı* 1977, *Kibar Feyzo* 1978, *Aşkın Gözyaşı* 1979.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_123.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 21. Top left to bottom right: “Stil”, Movie Posters: *Gülizar* 1972, *Gülizar* 1972 (Detail), *Oğlum Osman* 1973, *Eksik Etek* 1976.</figcaption></figure>
(1827-1901) and was released by the foundry Otto Weisert in Germany in 1904.<fnref n="15" /> With its organic and flowery shapes, it had a considerable revival in the 1960s and 1970s and was adopted by many dry-transfer manufacturers such as Letraset ("Letraset Katalog" 1978, p. 16). It appears on multiple Turkish movie posters in the 1970s such as *Gülizar* 1972, *Oğlum Osman (My son Osman)* 1973, and *Eksik Etek (The Missing Skirt)* 1976.

### Roberta

A further exceptional Art Nouveau-style typeface is used in the vertical sign of the wedding dress shop "Bayar" on the Weseler Straße in Duisburg-Marxloh (Figure 22). The typeface called *Roberta* is designed by Bob Trogman in 1962/63 and released by the foundry FotoStar in the USA. The letter shapes were either inspired by wood type initials Trogman spotted in a Belgian magazine<fnref n="16" /> or a Belgian restaurant sign.<fnref n="17" /> *Roberta* is again a popular font in the 1960s and 1970s movie posters, such as *Ezo Gelin (The Bride Ezo)* 1968, *Aşk Sepeti (The Love Basket)* 1972, *Para (Money)* 1972, and *Şaban Oğlu Şaban (Saban the Son of Saban)* 1977.

### Revue

Another notable example is the typeface *Revue* designed by Colin Brignall for Letraset England, released in 1968¹⁸ (ibid., p. 90). It appears on a fashion shop for men's evening wear "Milano" (Figure 23) as well as in offer notices on the window panes of bridal fashion shops<fnref n="19" /> on the Weseler Straße in Duisburg-Marxloh. *Revue* is also the font used in the title design of a movie titled the *Inatçı Gelin (The Stubborn Bride)* in 1965, and *Mutlu Ol Yeter (Be happy, that is all I want)* 1981.

### The Typographic Representation of the Miracle of Duisburg-Marxloh

It appears that the shop owners use these intriguing, lively, and manifold typefaces here to create something particular. Most of these movies that show typefaces also used on signs in wedding dress shops in Duisburg-Marxloh already indicated in their titles that they evolve

<footnote n="15">15. Cf. https://fontsinuse.com/\index{typeface}typefaces/1142/arnold-boecklin (retrieved 30.09.20).</footnote>

<footnote n="16">16. Cf. https://drtype.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/origin-of-roberta-font/ (retrieved 30.09.20).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">17. Cf. http://www fontbros.com/families/roberta/styles/fancy-caps (retrieved am 30.09.20).</footnote>

<footnote n="18">18. Cf. https://fontsinuse.com/\index{typeface}typefaces/3485/revue (retrieved am 30.09.20).</footnote>

<footnote n="19">19. Seen on the Weseler Straße in Duisburg-Marxloh at "ag collection" in September 2020.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_124.png" /></figure>

FIGURE 22. Top left to bottom right: “Bayar” Wedding Dress Shop in Duisburg-Marxloh, Movie Posters: *Ezo Gelin* 1968, *Ezo Gelin* 1968 (Detail), *Aşk Sepeti* 1972, *Para* 1972, *Şaban Oğlu Şaban* 1977.

around love and lovers overcoming all kinds of obstacles. Like most romantic comedies particularly in that period, they are concerned with "finding the one" and ultimately marriage (Ölmeyen Şarkı 1977, Eksik Etek 1976, Aşk Sepeti 1972, İnatçı Gelin 1965). They are also concerned with the search for happiness by leaving the countryside and moving to big cities (Aşkın Gözyaşı 1979, Kibar Feyzo 1978, Mutlu Ol Yeter 1981)—i.e., the dream of escaping from poverty. Furthermore, some films address the situation of Turkish labour migrants in Germany, the travelling back and forth between Turkey and Germany, the contact with German culture, Turkish-German love relationships, and the migrant work experience in Germany (Oğlum Osman 1973) as well as the challenges between young lovers, one of whom grew up in Europe and the other in Turkey (Gülizar 1972).

These typeface choices appear like a typographic representation of the miracle of Duisburg-Marxloh. They imply a specific historical, geographical, and contextual reference and are characterised by an interesting play with traditions. The typefaces combine connotations to hopes and dreams on multiple levels: The wonderous saving of Marxloh by inventing a new branch of industry, the dream of a fairy tale wedding that brides, grooms, and their family entourages might have, whilst shopping for evening attire for weddings, and the stories that are told in these movies, of love, of transcending into other spaces and, at times, of being
<figure><img src="image_125.png" /></figure>

FIGURE 23. Top left to bottom right: Fashion shop for men's evening wear “Milano” and offer notice on bridal fashion shop “ag collection”, Movie Posters: *Inatçı Gelin* 1965, *Inatçı Gelin* 1965 (Detail), *Mutlu Ol Yeter* 1981.

liberated from poverty. These hopes are resonating through the streets of a migrant community in Duisburg-Marxloh by means of the shapes of these letters.

To deepen and continue this research, some of the key questions should be: What is the signs producers' perspective, their motivations and communicative goals? To what extent are these typeface choices the result of a conscious decision? Do the shop owners explicitly and consciously make references to movies from the 1970s, or is it more a matter of a subconscious favouring of popular and iconic lettering of a specific time and place? To what extent are graphic designers or sign manufacturers involved in recommending typefaces and how consciously (concerning the history of the use of the typeface) are they making these recommendations? Are there any technical reasons for recommending certain typefaces over others (such as availability, software, production techniques)? These questions can only be answered in interviews with shop owners and sign producers (which will be the next step in my doctoral research).
## 8. Results: Shop Types

This case study focusses on the typographic genre indication through graphetic resources in different shop types in the Ruhr area. The objective is to identify how retail shops that offer various products and services differ in their typographic visual appearance to create distinction and recognition. It is assumed that different sectors use varying graphic resources in order to achieve their communicative objectives and indicate genres, and that typifications occur within certain groups.

The 12,556 commercial signs in the data set identify 711 individual shops. They form 30 shop types (e.g., jewellers, hairdressers, bakeries, dry cleaners, gambling halls) that are categorised into five topical clusters ((1) Retail Shops, (2) Beauty Services, (3) Grocery Shops, (4) Repair and Cleaning Services, (5) Entertainment Venues). The shops' graphetic characteristics are analysed in a detailed visual analysis on imageboards (Figures 24 and 25) of two shop types in each cluster with a minimum of 20 individual shops per type (35–75 images per shop type). The imageboard analysis focusses on the grouping and measuring of the occurrences of shop names, type styles, image motives, colour palettes, materials, and sign types.

<figure><img src="image_126.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 24. Imageboard (sample slide) from the visual data analysis on type styles used in jewellery shop signs in the *Signs of the Metropolis* data.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_127.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 25. Imageboard (sample slide) from the visual data analysis on colours used in bakery signs in the *Signs of the Metropolis* data.</figcaption></figure>

## 8.1. Heterogeneous Forms

The analysis reveals that some shop types show very diverse, heterogeneous visual strategies and hence cannot be differentiated by their graphetic characteristics alone. In contrast, others do show prevalent occurrences of typical visual characteristics which allow presuming that graphetic characteristics visually indicate certain shop types in urban space.

Shops that exist in high numbers in our data and appear to be the most diverse and heterogeneous in their visual strategies in the Ruhr area are 73 hairdressers, 114 fashion shops, and 28 grocery shops (Figure 26). They use a wide range of colours, sign types, and typefaces. Fashion shops use *Comic Sans* as well as gothic letter shapes and everything in between without a significant repeated occurrence of particular type styles. Hairdressers and grocery shops show equally versatile and colourful visual strategies.
<figure><img src="image_128.png" /><figcaption>Shop types with heterogeneous visual strategies</figcaption></figure>

FIGURE 26. Hairdressers, fashion shops, and grocery shops are three shop types that show very heterogeneous visual strategies in the *Signs of the Metropolis* data.

## 8.2. Homogeneous Forms

Other shop types, however, show prevalent occurrences of typical visual characteristics, such as 24 jewellery shops, 30 bakeries, and 21 gambling halls (Figure 27). The following is a brief description of the three shop types.

Of the 24 jewellery shops, 56% use a serif typeface in their central shop sign. Contrary to the dominance of sans serif typefaces across all dis- course types in our data set, it is impressive how united the group of jew- ellers are in the prevalent use of serif typefaces in this context of valuable and expensive goods. This result coincides with the high use of serif type- faces in the study of jewellers' shops in Antwerp Belgium by Pescatore Frisk and Pauwels (2019, p. 12). To this very day serif typefaces still refer
Shop types with typical visual characteristics

<figure><img src="image_129.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 27. Jewellers, bakeries, and gambling halls are three shop types that show more homogeneous visual strategies with prevalent occurrences of typical visual characteristics in the *Signs of the Metropolis* data.</figcaption></figure>

to value, authority, power, and status (cf. Walker, 2014, p. 44), hinting at their origin and historical contexts of use as capital inscriptions (*Capitals Monumentalis*) in ancient Rome (cf. Sutton and Bartram, 1988, p. 5f). Letterforms carry connotations that convey their places and times of origin as well as early contexts of use. The communication of value and luxury in the visual design of jewellery shops is not only generated by the type styles alone but co-occur with the 48% use of the colour gold in the letters and by valuably and individually crafted luminous relief letters in 30% of the shops. 56% of the jewellery shops use no images.

Of 30 bakeries, 40% use a scriptural font in their central shop sign. Scriptural typefaces reference the movement of the human writing hand in the letterforms and thereby appear handmade, trustworthy, personal,
and tangible (cf. Brumberger, 2003, p. 210): Attributes that one equally wishes from a homemade breakfast roll. 87% of the bakeries use a combination of warm colours such as red, yellow, orange, and brown that can be linked to associations of heat, baking, oven, and bread. 75% of the bakeries show pictures like ears of corn, pretzels, and bread loaves. 87% use adhesive foils and lightboxes on their shops. It is apparent from our data that there is a prototypical visuality in bakeries in the urban space of the Ruhr area with multiple combinations of the most common graphic parameters in many shops. A scriptural typeface in red and yellow with picture elements such as ears, windmills, and pretzels on lightboxes and adhesive foils, should be a fairly reliable indicator for the nearest bakery for passers-by in the Ruhr Metropolis.

Of 21 gambling halls, 60% use a serif, a slab serif, or a decorative typeface in their central shop sign, 40% make a reference to American show typefaces, as used in the gamblers' paradise Las Vegas. There are serif typefaces (top image) whose outlines emulate glowing neon signs next to a photo of the waving cowboy, a landmark neon sign that is placed in front of the *Pioneer Club* in Las Vegas. There is a visual representation of marquee lettering<fnref n="20" /> (central image) above a silhouette of the Las Vegas welcome sign.<fnref n="21" /> And there are decorative serif typefaces (bottom image), which are reminiscent of 19th-century American wood type with Tuscan-styled serifs in the centre and lower part of the letters (Kelly, 2010, p. 87f). 50% of the signs are very colourful, showing more than three colours. Over 50% of the signs show pictures of, for instance, playing cards, dice, roulette tables, bills, and coins. The most common sign types are adhesive foils, cantilevers, and lightboxes. The styles, shapes, visual treatments and arrangements of the letters, the emulations of sign types as well as the colours and images are forming a genre by which this group of communicative actors repeatedly and unambiguously references gambling and, in particular, the geographic location of Las Vegas, without, however, mentioning the city's name.

## 8.3. Interim Conclusion: Shop Types

The results show that the shop types that use the most diverse strategies are in tendency the ones with the highest occurrences in numbers in our data: 73 hairdressers und 114 fashion shops. Using similar visual strategies appears to be regarded as beneficial solely to merchants and providers of similar products and services when the relative frequency

<footnote n="20">20. Cf. https://www.neonmuseum.org/the-collection/north-gallery) (eingesehen am 30.09.20).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">21. Cf. https://www.rd.com/advice/travel/things-you-never-knew-about-the-las-vegas-sign/ (eingesehen am 30.09.20).</footnote>
of this kind of shops is low, and when they are not in direct visual com-
petition. Otherwise, the differentiation amongst each other seems to
override the wish to be distinguishable as a group of dealers with a sim-
ilar product range. Twelve hairdressers in one street do not want to look
alike. In contrast, the only jeweller in one particular street might want
to be recognised as the one and only by using all the visual cues typical
of the genre in a most deliberate way.

Those shops which are fewer in numbers—such as the 24 jewellery
shops, 30 bakeries, and 21 gambling halls—predominantly prefer a range
of prototypical combinations of typographic means to communicate
who they are and what they are selling. This indicates that graphetic
resources can be central to the contextualisation, positioning and recog-
nisability of communicative actors in urban space. Choices on type
styles, colours, images, and sign types create genres in build-up envi-
ronments, enable sign producers to achieve their communicative goals
by reaching their audience—unless strong direct competition causes the
retailer to focus less on the thematic genre and more on outdoing the di-
rect visual competitors. Furthermore, if not in the immediate vicinity, it
can be assumed that the formation of visual clusters between shop types
and the repeated use of certain graphic resources lead to visual patterns
that form perceptual expectations and graphic knowledge, with the ef-
fect of providing orientation to sign recipients.

9. Conclusion

This paper develops a framework of eleven parameters for the analysis
of typographic artefacts in urban spaces in order to investigate how dis-
course types, genres, and text functions differ in their graphic appear-
ance. The eleven parameters are (1) the geographical location of the
sign in the city, (2) the discourse type of the message, (3) the languages
used, (4) the script systems used, (5) the type styles used, (6) the size
and positioning of the sign, (7) the colours used, (8) the materials used,
(9) the sign types such as lightbox, adhesive foil, or stone engraving,
(10) the integration into the architectural context and mounting height,
and (11) the graphic composition and density of the visual surface.

In conclusion, the analysis of the discourse types based on the eleven
parameters shows that each discourse type (regulatory, infrastructural,
commercial, transgressive, and commemorative) is characterised by
different accents and unique combinations with respect to the use of
graphic resources. Four out of five discourse types mainly use various
materials to realise their messages: Regulatory signs use metal; com-
mercial signs use plastic, foil, and paper; transgressive signs use stick-
ers and paint; and commemorative signs use a lot of iron, cast metal, and
stone. Regulatory and infrastructural signs show sans serif typefaces in
98% of the cases, whereas commercial and transgressive signs show (up to almost 20%) serif, script, and decorative typefaces. Thus, it can be stated that, in our data, core materials, and prototypical combinations of typographic resources point, in some way or another, to discourses in urban space. Thereby the signs indicate the type of information passed by are encountering. It can be argued that these usual contexts of use create reception patterns (cf. Spitzmüller, 2013, p. 241) and that the re-curring combinations of graphic resources provide sign recipients with a frame of orientation (cf. Hanks, 1987, p. 681) in urban space.

The comparison of the northern and southern neighbourhoods reveals the indication of social spaces, for example, in the very uneven distribution of script systems: 92.72% of the Arabic scripts in the North and 77.9% of the Hànzi, Kanji/Hiragana/Katakana, and Hangul in the South of the Ruhr Metropolis. Furthermore, the data analysis shows that the North is graphically as colourful as its population structure is diverse. For instance, the use of type styles is more diversified in the North than in the South; particularly, in the predominant discourse type, the commercial signs, which are characterised by more serif and decorative typefaces. Moreover, the North shows higher occurrences in 11 out of 14 colours in commercial signs. Thus, a more diverse residential structure seems to be connected to a broader range of visual strategies. All in all, cultural and linguistic diversity becomes apparent as being linked to visual and typographic plurality.

A closer look at the outstanding results in the Duisburg-Marxloh district, where most non-German and Turkish texts, as well as the largest group of decorative typefaces, were found, reveals a meaningful relationship of these results in the typographic design of wedding dress shops, using typefaces that played a significant role on 1960s/70s movie posters. These processes relating to visual identity creation in making typographic connections to other places, previous times, and contexts of meaning (cf. Briggs and Bauman, 1992, p. 147) are worth a further in-depth exploration.

The analysis of the (typo)graphic appearance of 711 shops grouped in 30 shop types selling various products and services in five topical clusters ((1) Retail Shops, (2) Beauty Services, (3) Grocery Shops, (4) Repair and Cleaning Services, (5) Entertainment Venues) shows that the abundant and ubiquitous shops use very diverse, heterogeneous visual strategies and cannot be differentiated by their graphetic characteristics. In contrast, some of the smaller groups clearly show prevalent occurrences of typical visual characteristics, which means their typographic outfit indicates who they are and what they are selling.

The shop types with the most diverse strategies are the ones with the highest numbers of shops (hairdressers and fashion shops), which indicates that using similar visual strategies appears only beneficial when the relative frequency of a shop type is low. Otherwise, the differentia-
tion amongst each other seems to override the wish to be distinguishable as a group of dealers with a similar product range. Eight fashion shops in one street do not want to look alike. In contrast, one gambling hall in one street wants to be recognised as such by using all the visual cues typical of the genre in a deliberate way.

In the less ubiquitous shops, such as the jewellery shops, bakeries, and gambling halls, recurring combinations of genre-specific graphetic resources indicate the respective communicative actors and product sectors. As far as these shops are concerned, the typographic decisions that shop owners make can be taken, to a considerable extent, as a clue to who they are and what they are offering. This proves that typographic and graphic decisions in urban space have a unique ability to visually indicate communicative actors, point out and (re)create genres as well as to distinguish between traders and product groups.

Overall, this study shows that the form and materiality of written language are related to its communicative meaning and significance. Typographic decisions in urban spaces form visual patterns that offer orientation to potential sign recipients. The analysis of the graphetic resources used in cityscapes indicates communicative actors and socio-spatial structures since references to meaning travel with letterforms through times and places. This enables sign producers to use typographic resources to point to current and past contexts of use and create connotative spaces of significance.

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——— (2019). *Identitätskonstruktionen durch skripturale Variation mehrsprachiger Typografie im urbanen Raum*. Duisburg: Universitätsverlag Rhein-Ruhr.

Walker, Sue (2014). *Typography and Language in Everyday Life—Prescriptions and Practices*. London: Routledge.

Wehde, Susanne (2000). *Typografische Kultur. Eine zeichentheoretische und kulturgeschichtliche Studie zur Typographie und ihrer Entwicklung*. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Willberg, Hans Peter (2001). *Wegweiser Schrift*. Mainz: Verlag Hermann Schmidt.

Ziegler, Evelyn et al. (2018). *Metropolenzeichen—Atlas zur visuellen Mehrsprachigkeit in der Metropole Ruhr*. Duisburg: Universitätsverlag Rhein-Ruhr.

## Appendix: Picture IDs in the Database

Figure 1. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: 5499, 13635, IMG_3711, 21843, 258, 1563, 0330, 9094, 1964. The top right image was taken by the author in a subsequent data collection 2019 in Essen-Rüttenscheid.

Figure 5. Picture IDs 12230, 20529, 17703, 19312, 1676.

Figure 6. Picture IDs 12230, 20529, 17703, 19312, 1676.

Figure 7. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: 319, 5404, 9745, 5121, 12230, 4361, 4476, 28486, 20817.

Figure 8. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: 5005, 423, 1316, 1198, 20529, 5506, 1215, 25148, 11951.

Figure 9. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: IMG_3709, 11259, 25234, 3586, 354, 4086, 19526, 25460, 26867. The top left image was subsequently collected by the author in 2019 in the Essen-Rüttenscheid collection area.

Figure 10. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: IMG_3574, 8175, 12698, 7905, 5830, 8892, 5717, 12282, 610. The top left image was subsequently collected by the author in 2019 in the Essen-Rüttenscheid collection area.

Figure 11. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: 1676, 4187, 9688, 26138, 11361, 17243, 2658, 15036, 14701.

Figure 16. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: 4089, 18108, 16751, 2197, 25351, 25384, 25005, 23961.

Figure 17. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: 4138, 16805, 16495, 16758, 24069, 26479, 26429, 24081.

Figure 18. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: (a) Hairdresser (16081), (b) Cafe (16152), (c) Restaurant (16797/IMG_0195), (d) Cafe (16725/IMG_0210), (e) Bakery (17078), (f) Music school (16062).
Figure 19. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: (a) “Topkapı Gelinlik” (16895), (b) “Stil” (16570), (c) “Bayar” (Bayar_Roberta_GSV_2008) (The photo of the shop sign “Bayar” in Weseler Straße 30, Duisburg-Marxloh was overlooked in the data collection 2013/14 and taken from the Google Street View recorded in September 2008.), (d) “Milano” (16555), (e) “Dikelim” (IMG_0315) (The photo of the shop “Podium” (Dikelim) in Duisburg-Marxloh was subsequently collected in 2020.), (f) “Gelinlik & Abiye” (16768/IMG_0282), (g) “Braut Karakaşlar” (IMG_0154) (The photo of the shop sign “Braut Karakaşlar” in Weseler Straße 42, Duisburg-Marxloh was subsequently collected in 2020 as it was overlooked in the data collection 2013/2014. However, it already existed in 2013/2014.), (h) “Tesettür Giyim” (16577), (i) “Gelinlik/Brautmoden” (16434).

Figure 20. Picture ID top left: “Topkapı Gelinlik” Wedding Dress Shop in Duisburg-Marxloh (16895, 16895_Detail). All movie poster images are retrieved from the online archive of the “Center for Turkish Cinema Studies” (www.tsa.org.tr) on 30.09.20.

Figure 21. Picture ID top left: “Stil” (Picture ID 16570, Stil_ArnoldBoecklin_GSV_2008) (The photo of the shop sign “Stil” in Weseler Straße, Duisburg-Marxloh on the facade above the cloth awning was overlooked in the data collection 2013/14 and taken from Google Street View recorded in September 2008.) All movie poster images are retrieved from the online archive of the “Center for Turkish Cinema Studies” (www.tsa.org.tr) on 30.09.20.

Figure 22. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: “Bayar” (Bayar_Roberta_GSV_2008). The photo of the shop sign “Bayar” in Weseler Straße, Duisburg-Marxloh was overlooked in the data collection 2013/14 and taken from Google Street View recorded in September 2008. All movie poster images are retrieved from the online archive of the “Center for Turkish Cinema Studies” (www.tsa.org.tr) on 30.09.20.

Figure 23. Picture IDs top left to bottom right: “Milano” (Picture ID 16555), “ag collection” (IMG_0181) (seen on the Weseler Straße in Duisburg-Marxloh in September 2020). All movie poster images are retrieved from the online archive of the “Center for Turkish Cinema Studies” (www.tsa.org.tr) on September 30, 2020.

Figure 26. Picture IDs top to bottom: Hairdressers (16673, 4763, 17713), fashion shops (14515, 19913, 26429), grocery stores (13913, 16751, 19526).

Figure 27. Picture IDs top to bottom: Jewellers (24017, 16421, 4034), bakeries (25544, 5553, 17533), gambling halls (1083, 1085, 26867).
<figure><img src="image_130.png" /></figure>
# Between the Words

## Emotional Punctuation in the Digital Age
Communication

Olga Kulish

*Abstract.* A hidden, yet very important part of the written language is punctuation. Traditionally, punctuation is primarily used for grammatical purposes, serving to structure a written text. On the other hand, a variety of previously unseen options for using punctuation nowadays give it a new role and a separate meaning, different from what we previously knew. More specifically, an important aspect of using punctuation in digital communication is the tendency to use it as a way of expressing personal emotions and non-verbal signals, similar to facial expressions and gestures in live, face-to-face communication, that are typically not possible to convey otherwise. This article aims to analyze different contemporary ways of using punctuation in the areas of graphic design and digital communication. In particular, the study looks into novel, unconventional punctuation marks, as well as their possible combinations. As a practical contribution, this study also presents a collection of novel signs created by peer students and colleagues, which were combined and assembled into a common system. Each sign represents a specific human emotion, a mood, or a state of mind, and provides written text with a new meaning and/or different pronunciation. This project is rather an experiment, but despite its seemingly informal and casual nature, it reflects the existing tendencies in modern digital communication.

### 1. Introduction

Early punctuation primarily served for oral communication, helping speakers to structure their speech (e.g., Aristophanes' system of dots, Lupton and Miller, 1999). The technological advances enabled further development of written communication through book printing, mass production, advertisements, and posters. As a result, punctuation gradually became more systematized and universalized, eventually turning into an integral part of many alphabets. Nowadays, punctuation undertakes not only grammatical functions, but also enables more complete and comprehensive expression of emotions in written communication.

<figure><img src="image_131.png" /></figure>
Among the most widely used “emotional” punctuation marks are the exclamation and question marks, the ellipsis, and the quotation marks. Their manifold functionality allows expressing a wide range of emotions in a written form. People express their excitement, sadness and anger, or simply ask questions by placing one of these marks or a sequence of them at the end of a sentence. To achieve this well-defined set of marks and corresponding emotions, for several centuries, people continuously experimented with shapes and curves, trying to express their feelings and emotions through different marks.

Nowadays when using punctuation marks in written communication, people seem to consider only the currently adopted use of a punctuation mark, whereas its possibly different historical meanings are neglected. The same applies to the new meanings emerged in the Digital Era. That is, one and the same punctuation mark could have completely different functions and convey completely different meanings in the past, when it first appeared, and in the present time, more and more dependent on digital communication. Indeed, with the invention of digital forms of communication and information representation, the role of punctuation is changing. As we more often use computers, smartphones and other digital channels to communicate (e.g., e-mails, instant messengers, blogs, comments, etc.), we are witnessing a change in the accustomed writing system and the established way of using punctuation marks. More specifically, in the Digital Age, punctuation marks are often combined in some novel ways, thereby providing a completely different semantic meaning. They are also frequently used even without a textual context as independent stand-alone elements. Moreover, even when used in a text, their original role changes to such an extent that they can modify the overall meaning of a sentence. In modern digital communication, we often treat punctuation very casually, skipping some marks or—vice versa—putting extra marks or combining several of them, thus aiming to add an emotional connotation to the written text. This way, punctuation often provides non-verbal signals to the written language, which usually lacks the usual benefits of the live, face-to-face communication and is unable to unambiguously express human emotions.

In this context, this paper looks into novel, unconventional punctuation marks, as well as their possible combinations. It focuses on the lack of emotional expressivity in written digital communication, and explores the potential of punctuation marks to communicate human emotions, primarily from a graphic designer's point of view. The study contributes to the research on punctuation marks by exploring how their role in human communication has evolved since the early days until the Digital Age. As a practical contribution, this study also presents a collection of novel signs created by peer students and colleagues, which were combined and assembled into a common system. Each sign represents a specific human emotion, a mood, or a state of mind, and provides written usage descrip-
tion with a new meaning and/or different phonation. These newly designed signs are unique to their authors and reflect their personal feelings and views, and are, therefore, not necessarily understandable by the others, as revealed by a conducted survey, also included in this study.

## 2. Conventional Punctuation: Changing the Meaning

The use of punctuation marks in the modern written language varies depending on the media and the target audience, for which a certain text is written. For example, scientific writing uses a formal technical language with relatively strict punctuation rules, where a casual unstructured arrangement of signs is unacceptable, especially when it concerns strict mathematical formulas and/or scientific statements. On the other hand, in poetic pieces of literature, the author's arrangement of punctuation marks often does not follow the established rules but is still acceptable. Punctuation in this case is used by the author to convey the emotional message of the piece, improve the interaction between the reader and the piece, and establish a connection between the reader and the author. Some authors even aim to experiment with how their works are communicated to the reader using punctuation signs. For example, in some of his poems the French writer Guillaume Apollinaire did not use punctuation at all (Apollinaire, 1918).

According to Adrian Frutiger's classification (Frutiger, 1989), punctuation marks can be divided into three main groups depending on their main purpose: sentence-structuring signs, expression signs, and reference signs. Among the three groups, expression signs are of particular relevance to this study. This group includes three punctuation marks: the *exclamation mark* (used for expressing affirmation or exclamation), the *question mark* (used for expressing a question or a doubt), and the *quotation marks* (used for expressing different types of quoted speech).

It is impossible to ignore the fact that communication through written messages is deprived of the physical, personal communication, when we can see a person, their emotions and feelings, as well as other non-verbal signals. In informal writing we often replace all these by words, punctuation, emoticons, “emojis,” pictures, voice messages, etc. Concerning punctuation, for example, two opponents in a dialogue can use an excessive number of characters, such as several exclamation and question marks in a row, as well as many full stops. Some punctuation marks change their meaning in texting nowadays: for example, a full stop at the end of a phrase might be perceived not just as the end of it, but makes the message appear less sincere (Gunraj et al., 2016), or convey negative emotions. Such a full stop at the end of the message in texting is often referred to as a “dot of hate”.

A full stop has acquired yet another role in the design works of Un Mundo Feliz—a public initiative that unites cultural activists and graphic
<figure><img src="image_132.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Arial font with a swastika symbol by Un Mundo Feliz (Feliz, 2015) Source: http://unmundofeliz2.blogspot.com/2015/10/el-patriotismo-arail-symbol.html</figcaption></figure>

designers who aim to disseminate social and political messages through their artworks in new digital media, such as the Internet. They consider graphic activism as a controversial site for promoting public debates and confrontations (Jiménez, García, and Fernández, 2011). In their work, all the dots in the Arial font were changed to a swastika symbol (Fig. 1).

Speaking of less frequently used symbols and signs, it is worth mentioning that some symbols, albeit not used today in everyday writing, are still widely used by the graphic designers to prepare books, corporate
identity, posters and other graphic materials. Due to their unusual shape and semiotic meaning of the past, they have become quite popular nowadays.

A good example of this is the *index* ✉—an index translated from Latin as “little hand”. The symbol represents a pointing hand, which literally means “pay attention to” or “look at the direction of the pointing finger”. The modern function of this sign in many graphic design projects is to catch the attention of the reader, user, consumer or any other person staring at the sign, when, for example, passing by a café, thereby inviting them to enter inside (Fig. 2). In a broad sense, the meaning of this punctuation sign nowadays is the same as in the 12th century, when it first appeared (Houston, 2013).

<figure><img src="image_133.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. Manicules on advertising signs in Poland, Ukraine and Russia. Source: author's personal archive.</figcaption></figure>

Punctuation in logotypes typically conveys some semantic information, such as, for example, in the personal logotype of the type designer Martin Majoor who creates font families, consisting of both serif and sans serif typefaces (Fig. 3). Accordingly, his logo represents a handshake of a serif and a sans serif manicules.

<figure><img src="image_134.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 3. Martin Majoor's personal logotype. Source: http://martinmajoor.com</figcaption></figure>
Another example is the book cover for *The scarlet letter* novel (1850). The pointing hands perfectly reflect the main topic of the novel—social shaming and stigmatizing (Fig. 4).

<figure><img src="image_135.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 4. Cover for the novel *The Scarlet Letter* by Mr Furious. Source: http://recoveringtheclassics.com</figcaption></figure>

The usage and the meaning of punctuation marks constantly change, in the same way as, for example, the economic and social situation. Today we interpret a semicolon and a bracket as a smiling face:) when receiving a digital message from a friend. Similarly, full stops appearing in the middle of a word have acquired a new connotation in the French language, since they commonly represent a unisex, gender-neutral version of a word (Vernooij, 2018).

## 3. Emoticons

In text communication (especially in texting) that is partially limited by the set of characters on the keyboard, people “invented” a new way of conveying emotions by using combinations of punctuation marks, as well as numbers and letters—that is, by using emoticons. The first digital emoticon (at least in the way we use it today) was used by Scott Ruan
(2011) when he included a smiling face :-) and a sad face :-( in his e-mail.

A system of such signs has become widely adopted in digital com-
munication, when writing electronic messages and posts. The system
of emoticons is constantly supplemented with new signs, as well as with
the so-called ASCII<fnref n="1" /> Text Art. Such text art, however, existed before the
era of personal computers. For example, in 1948, Paul Hadley published
an article Keyboard Art in the "Popular Mechanics" magazine (Hadley,
1948), where he provided a creative master class on creating own emoti-
cons using a usual typewriter (Fig. 5).

<figure><img src="image_136.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 5. “Keyboard Art” by Paul Hadley. Source: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/ascii-art-1948</figcaption></figure>

Interestingly, the first emoticons appeared long before the mankind
was able to send electronic messages. The first use of the emoticon is
related to the American satirical magazine Puck that published an arti-
cle titled “Typographical Art” in 1881 (“Typographical Art” 1881). The

<footnote n="1">1. ASCII Table and Description https://www.asciitable.com/.</footnote>
article was illustrated with four pictograms symbolizing melancholy, in-difference, astonishment and joy (Fig. 6).

<figure><img src="image_137.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 6. "Typographical Art" in Puck Magazine. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puck_(magazine)</figcaption></figure>

Nowadays, the popularity of emoticons has also been supported and promoted by various instant messengers, where multiple combinations of characters from different written systems are widely adopted by Internet users. The popularity of emoticons and emojis rapidly grew in the Digital Age, making it the subject of research for psychologists, philologists, and linguists. From these scientific perspectives, these signs are considered as a natural change of the written language, caused by the ubiquitous spread of mobile networks and the Internet.

Emoticons (particularly faces) communicate emotions in a very literal way, and the widest category among them is a smiling happy face (see Annex A). The smiley face is a very recognizable symbol, and it is widely used everywhere in visual communication: labels, magazines, street signs, etc. (Fig. 7).

Some other examples include the logotypes of type foundries, companies and conferences, where it is easy to spot a smiling face, resembling the famous emoticon Smiley (Fig. 8).

With the emergence of *emojis*, they become popular not only as a supplement to the text but become a text itself. One of the examples is *Book from the ground* (Xu, 2014), which is written in emoticons, where you can still see the punctuation marks, which serve their conventional role (Fig. 9).
<figure><img src="image_138.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 7. Smiling faces on different objects and in advertisement. Source: https://slanted.de, author's personal archive.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_139.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 8. Examples of smiling faces in the logotypes of: Laughter Conference, Threedotstype Type Foundry, DesignByHumans, Laïc: Type Foundry. Source: https://laughter.pja.edu.pl, https://threedot.com, https://designbyhumans.com, https://laic.pl</figcaption></figure>

Another beautiful example is the book “Genesis” by Juli Gudehus (1997), where the biblical creation story was translated into pictograms, symbols and logos (Fig. 10).

World-wide use of emoticons has also been adopted in the typographic practice, where a written language is supplemented by new signs integrated into a text. Nevertheless, combinations of standard punctuation marks in the form of emotional faces does not lose its popularity. This is mainly due to the possibility of expressing emotions even without using words, which makes such a “language” universal to a certain extent, as well as shortens the time spent on writing, in particular, when typing short text messages. As a result, punctuation marks are often given a new meaning and a new role.
<figure><img src="image_140.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 9. *Book from the Ground* by Xu Bing. Source: http://xubing.com</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_141.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 10. “Genesis” by Juli Gudehus. Source: https://juligudehus.net</figcaption></figure>

## 4. Unconventional Punctuation

### 4.1. An Overview of Existing Signs

The first documented attempt to express thoughts without explicitly using words, but rather using a specific sign in written communication
dates back to the 16th century and was made by the London printers Parkes (2016). The *percontativus* symbol ☞ was used by them to mark a *percontatio*, or a rhetorical question, and was “employed not to elicit information, but for purposes of rhetorical effect instead of a positive statement” (ibid.). This punctuation mark looks like a reversed question mark, and appears in several books in 1580 and 1581 (and less frequently in the 17th century)—for example, in hand-written works of the English poets Robert Herrick and Thomas Middleton.

The first documented evidence of using an *irony mark* dates to 1668 and can be found in Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language authored by the English philosopher John Houston (2013). The sign he proposed looks like an inverted exclamation mark ! (ibid.). It was not used very widely, but the idea of a punctuation mark to represent irony has been quite popular until very recently, judging from the number of various designed signs: *Irony* by Marcelline Jobard in 1842 (Jobard, 1842); *Point d'ironie* by Alcanter de Brahm in 1899 (De Brahm, 2018); *SarcMark™* by Douglas and Paul Sak in 2006; *Ironieteken*<fnref n="2" /> by Underware in 2007 (see Annex B). However, none of these marks is being actively used nowadays.

A whole new system of emotional punctuation marks was proposed by the French writer Hervé Bazin in his essay “Plumons l’Oiseau” (“Let’s pluck the bird”) in 1966 (Bazin, 1966). Bazin’s signs expressed a range of emotions, such as doubt ☼, certitude †, acclamation !, authority †, love point ♡, and irony ♦. This project was brought back to life by Mykyta Yevstifeyev and Karl Pentzlin in 2011 (Yevstifeyev and Pentzlin, 2012), who proposed to include these 6 characters in the Unicode standard. Furthermore, the newly-developed font Bazin that includes these unconventional symbols is freely available for downloading and installing for digital use (Zong, 2015). There are also other new punctuation marks, available online, that aim to address narrow-tailored purposes in written communication, such as Sarkmark by Jacob Smith<fnref n="3" /> (Smith, 2015) or the set of “Legal marks” (Stewart, 2015).

Noteworthy, quite a few of the invented punctuation marks mentioned above are intended to express irony. In most cases, it is quite typical to use quotation marks to show that the enclosed expression should be understood in a way, different from what is actually written. In this case, however, there is no guarantee that the irony will be correctly understood by the reader, since the quotation marks can be missed or misinterpreted by the reader. On the contrary, if the irony is indicated in a

<footnote n="2">2. https://underware.nl/logotypes/irony_mark/</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. Please note the difference between the two symbols with similar functions and slightly different names—SarcMark by Douglas and Paul Sak and Sarcmark by Jacob Smith.</footnote>
clear and unambiguous way by some kind of an irony mark, will there
be any room left for the readers to interpret the text in their own way?

Another widely known unconventional emotional sign is the inter-
robang. Designed by Martin K. Speckter in 1962 (Houston, 2013), it rep-
resents a combination of the question and exclamation marks merged
in a single glyph ? to replace the disjoint combination of the two marks.
Speckter proposed several designs for the new sign in his paper for the
Typo Talks journal, after which invited interested readers to contribute
to the design by sharing their own versions. The offer was successfully
accepted by a wider audience, resulting in multiple appearances of the
new sign not only in newspapers, such as Wall Street Journal and New
York Herald Tribune, but also in the next issue of the Typo Talks jour-
nal, which gathered and presented all the possible design variations pro-
posed by graphic designers and typographers (ibid.).

In 2017, a novel punctuation system was proposed by the Aus-
trian graphic designer and typographer Walter Bohatsch. In his book
“Typojis” (Bohatsch, 2018), he describes philosophical and linguistic
ideas that provided a foundation for creating a completely new system
of previously unseen signs. The system includes 30 symbols that serve
to represent different emotions and human moods, such as, for exam-
ple, sympathy, solidarity, curiosity, scepticism, boredom, etc.—all these
are typically difficult to express in written communication as “messages
with the kinds of additional meanings that are conveyed instantly when
speaking face to face” (ibid.). The main goal of the project was to elim-
inate ambiguity in written messages for better inter-human communi-
cation.

Taken together, the developed set of characters supplements a font
created by the author, thereby making Typojis look organic and nat-
ural when typing. Glyphs representing the signs are unified and have a
dot at the bottom, just below the baseline. Unlike emoticons that often
look like icons or pictograms, the typoji graphemes are abstract signs
of various asymmetric shapes. Nevertheless, to some extent they tend
to mimic familiar symbols, thereby invoking certain associations when
people are looking at them. For example, the sign of tolerance resem-
bles an agreement tick, and the irony sign reminds of its long-standing
predecessors—various modifications of the well-known question mark.

A common question asked by readers when reading sentences with
these signs: what intonation should I be using for such sentences? If in
the speech of a person I can imagine what punctuation mark I would put
at the end of a sentence, is it possible to recognize and visualize these
signs in oral communication?

The main difference of the new unconventional punctuation marks
from usual punctuation marks is their singular function. That is, each of
these new marks undertakes a single function of, for example, express-
ing a specific emotion, feeling or mood that the author would like to
communicate to the reader. As far as the digital media are concerned, another difference is that the new punctuation marks are not present on a typical modern keyboard of a PC or a smartphone, which we use to write digital messages. Accessibility and a constant visual reminder of the symbols' presence could significantly increase the distribution of these signs in written communication, while recognition would depend on the frequency of their appearance in electronic and printed media.

## 4.2. New Shapes, New Meaning

Our alphabet has gone through a long evolution from simple drawings and pictograms to abstract shapes, which we combine in different orders, thereby composing words, sentences, or even whole novels. Admittedly, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about an alphabet is letters. There are, however, many other signs and symbols that serve to structure a written text, provide it with a different phonation, or even completely change the meaning of words. Among these symbols are punctuation marks, which we use in written communication. What if there were much more punctuation marks to express virtually unlimited human emotions, moods, and states that need to be expressed by the humans when writing messages?

The spectrum of human emotions is virtually unlimited, and expressing them even in a live communication, either in a verbal or a non-verbal manner, is already a challenge. In this respect, is it possible to think that punctuation marks can be sufficient to express all these subtle emotions, moods, and states in written communication? If yes, what kind of signs and how many of them do we need? How to ensure that these signs are unambiguously understood by people from different language and cultural backgrounds?

Accordingly, this section of the paper presents a collection of novel signs created by authors friends and colleagues, which were combined and assembled into a common system. Each sign reflects a very specific human emotion or a mood, so that a written text acquires a new meaning and different phonation, when combined with one of these signs.

Essentially, this project is a creative exercise on possible ways of expressing human emotions in written communication by means of graphic signs. Despite this seemingly informal and casual nature, the project actually reflects the existing tendencies in modern digital communication, such as the insertion of emoticons in texts, the absence of punctuation marks in place where they are typically used, and—vice versa—the presence of punctuation marks in unusual, unconventional places.

The 9 participants of this project come from three different professional backgrounds: linguists, software developers, and designers, who
were asked to create their own punctuation mark to express an emotion or a mood. The author got the original drawings (Fig. 11), each of which represented specific emotion, mood, or state, together with the description of each sign and an example of how this sign can be used in writing (see Annex C). All the resulting images were post-processed by the author to create a single system compatible with the font *Ayka Regular* Ayka by Maciej Połczyński⁴ (Fig. 12).

<figure><img src="image_142.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 11. Original drawings of suggested punctuation marks.</figcaption></figure>

This study on the new, unconventional punctuation marks, has resulted in the following interesting observations:

- Newly-invented marks match to the character of their creators and correlate with their backgrounds. To a great extent, all participants have expressed their own personalities through their suggested signs.

- An ambiguous and uncertain opinion on using additional unconventional punctuation marks. That is, when answering whether we need more punctuation marks, the distribution of votes was 60% for *Yes*
<figure><img src="image_143.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 12. Post-processed images.</figcaption></figure>

and 40% for *No*. Even though this statistics is not representative enough due to the limited number of participants, it is a promising finding that can serve as a starting point for further research.

Another interesting detail is that all the participants put their signs at the end of a sentence, thus following the conventional rules. Moreover, the first example of using a particular sign contained the same meaning in words. This could be due to the fact that the sign was just artificially invented and not evolved naturally, and the sign creators did not have necessary skills to use it correctly, even though they invented it.

## 5. Conclusion

Nowadays, punctuation undertakes not only grammatical functions, but also enables a more complete and comprehensive expression of emotions
in written communication. Among the most widely used “emotional” punctuation marks are the exclamation and question marks, the ellipsis, and the quotation marks. Their manifold functionality allows expressing a wide range of emotions in a written form. Despite this wide use and adoption of these marks, for many centuries new punctuation marks have been invented, serving to express different emotions and feelings, ranging from irony to asking a rhetorical question. Most of these newly invented marks are not being widely used today.

With the emergence and further development of digital media, punctuation has gained new functions and a new meaning. Punctuation marks were widely used as separate “pictograms”—emoticons, which later evolved into emojis. Nevertheless, since their first appearance in 1982, using textual emoticons still remains very popular.

Two opposite trends are observed in modern digital communication. On the one hand, people often do not follow generally accepted grammar rules, by, for example, not using a full stop at the end of a sentence (while the conventional full stop itself has received an additional negative connotation in informal digital messages). On the other hand, people tend to combine multiple punctuation marks as a way of expressing their emotions. This way, these combined marks act not as part of an alphabet, but rather as individual stand-alone pictograms.

In oral communication, human emotions are expressed through the voice tone and intonation. In written communication, however, the existing punctuation marks can only express a very limited set of basic emotions and human moods. As a result, it is often difficult if not impossible to share the exact emotional state with the reader in a written form.

Aiming to address this limitation (at least partially), the conducted case study suggested 9 participants to create their own to express very precise emotions, moods, or situations. As a result, each participant has proposed a unique emotion and a matching unique sign, none of which overlapped with each other. This project is rather an experiment, than a direct statement. Each of the newly-invented signs needs time for evolution, as well as the real demand from the society and the implementation in the digital technologies. A new sign should be recognizable by a group of people; it should exist in different typefaces and be accessible. In texting we often value minimum time delays, so probably will not search for hidden characters, rather type the most accessible symbols on a keyboard. Of course, it is opposite when it comes to experiments, artistic books or projects.

The practical experiment involved only 9 participants, but what if there were 100 or even 1,000 of them? Given the extreme range of human emotions and life situations, as well as the multitude of graphical forms to express them, how many unique, non-repeating signs would be proposed then? On the other hand, would it be possible to systematize
such a variety of signs and make them all recognizable and unambigu-
ously understandable by all people? There is probably no immediate
answer to all these questions, and the search is to be continued.

*Acknowledgments*

The author would like to thank dr. hab. Ewa Satalecka, professor of the
Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology, for her valuable
feedback and support.

References

Apollinaire, Guillaume (1918). *Calligrammes: poémes de la paix et da la guerre, 1913-1916*. Paris: Mercure de France.

Bazin, Hervé (1966). *Plumons l'oiseau*. Paris: Grasset.

Bohatsch, Walter (2018). *Typojis: A Few More Glyphs*. Mainz: Verlag Hermann Schmidt.

Brahm, Alcanter de (1899). *L'ostensoir des Ironies*. Paris: Bibliothèque d'art de «La Critique».

De Brahm, Alcanter (2018). *L'ostensoir des Ironies, Vol. 3 of 3: Essai de Méta-critique; Les Étapes de la Pensée Et le Sens de la Vie (Classic Reprint)*. London: Forgotten Books.

Feliz, Un Mundo (2015). *Patriotism(o) / Arial Symbol*. URL: http://unmundofeliz2.blogspot.com/2015/10/el-patriotismo-arail-symbol.html.

Frutiger, Adrian (1989). *Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning*. New York: Watson-Guptill.

Gudehus, Juli (1997). *Genesis*. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers.

Gunraj, Danielle N et al. (2016). “Texting insincerely: The role of the period in text messaging.” In: *Computers in Human Behavior* 55, pp. 1067–1075.

Hadley, Paul (1948). “Keyboard Art.” In: *Popular Mechanics* 10, p. 181.

Houston, Keith (2013). *Shady characters: The secret life of punctuation, symbols, and other typographical marks*. New York: WW Norton & Company.

Jiménez, M. Sonia Diaz, J. Gabriel Martinez García, and Isabel M. García Fernández (2011). “Bastard Pop Design, Visual Remix and Mashup (by Un Mundo Feliz).” In: *Design History Society Conference. Design activism and social change*.

Jobard, Jean Baptiste Ambroise Marcellin (1842). *Industrie française: rapport sur l'exposition de 1839*. Vol. 2. Paris: Mathias.

Lupton, Ellen and Abbott Miller (1999). *Design, Writing, Research*. London: Phaidon Press.

Parkes, Malcolm Beckwith (2016). *Pause and effect: An introduction to the history of punctuation in the West*. London: Routledge.
Ruan, Li (2011). "Meaningful Signs—Emoticons." In: *Theory and Practice in Language Studies* 1.1, pp. 91–94.

Smith, Jacob (2015). *The Sarcmark*. URL: https://jacobsmithdesign.wordpress.com/2015/06/02/the-sarcmark/.

Stewart, Brian M. (2015). *Innovative Punctuation for Innovative Legal Writing?*. URL: https://perma.cc/CN5L-DFBT.

"Typographical Art" (1881). In: *Puck Magazine* 212, p. 65.

Vernooij, Dennis (2018). *Vive la différence: Language activists are trying to make French gender-neutral*. URL: https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/05/17/language-activists-are-trying-to-make-french-gender-neutral.

Xu, Bing (2014). *Book from the ground: from point to point*. Boston: MIT Press.

Yevstifeyev, Mykyta and Karl Pentzlin (2012). *Revised preliminary proposal to encode six punctuation characters introduced by Hervé Bazin in the UCS*. Working Group Document. International Organization for Standardization.

Zong, Jonathan (2015). *Proposed Punctuation: The Typographic Apocrypha of Hervé Bazin*. URL: http://jonathanzong.github.io/proposed-punctuation/.
A. Annex A

<figure><img src="image_144.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 13. Smiling emoticons in different variations</figcaption></figure>
B. Annex B

<figure><img src="image_145.png" /></figure>

Percontation
point

1580s
Henry Denham,
Abell Jeffs

Irony

1668
John Wilkins

Irony

1841
Marcelline Jobard

Point d'ironie

1899
Alcanter de Brahm

Interrobang

1962
Martin K. Speckter

Set of characters

1966
Hervé Bazin

Exclamation comma,
question comma

1992
Leonard Storch, Ernst
van Haagen, Sigmund
Silber

<caption>FIGURE 14. Timeline of unconventional punctuation. Part 1/2</caption>
<figure><img src="image_146.png" /></figure>

Sarcmark
(copyrighted)

2006
Douglas
and Paul Sak

The snark

2006
Choz Cunningham

Ironieteken

2007
Underware

Whisper mark

2009
Jarema Drogowski

Friendly period

2010
Courtenay
Hameister

Elrey

2013
Ellen Suzan

Typoji̯s

2017
Walter Bohatsch

<caption>FIGURE 15. Timeline of unconventional punctuation. Part 2/2</caption>
## C. Annex C

**TO BE CONTINUED**

it is supposed to suggest to the reader that the current storyline will continue shortly, but an additional scene or an episode will interrupt it for a while

Sorry, I must
be leaving
now?

**EUREKA**

it is not just an exclamation mark, since it additionally highlights the fact that there was some exploration, searching and trying at the background

Finally?
I managed
to solve this
annoying bug
in my code

**SERENITY**

the dot represents the integrity of body and mind; the closed eye that we can see under the dot represents relaxation

Sure.

**UNCERTAINTY**

the sign shows a feeling when someone is not sure about the situation

I have some
plans, but
I will try.

**AND WHAT?**

astonishment mixed with irritation/excitement

— I've met Mark!
We started
talking and
I invited him
for a dinner
tonight.
— Great.

**SILENCE**

sometimes you need to say something out of politeness, but you do not know what to write

— What did
he tell you
when I left
yesterday?
— Nothing.

**DECISIVENESS**

an indication of the fact that the author's opinion will not change

It's not going
to happen.

**THE CONVERSATION IS NOT OVER**

the sign means that person is not satisfied with the result of the conversation

Will see.

**EMOTIONAL QUESTION**

a combination of the exclamation mark and the question mark

Who are you?

**SHAME**

when a person is ashamed of what happened and wants to apologise

Hi... You know,
I am still
thinking about
what happened
yesterday?

**TERRIBLE EXCITEMENT**

used for scary stories

You know
what happened
today?

**HANGOVER**

shows not just an emotional, but also a physical state

Omg dude,
the night was
amazing,
but today.

<caption>FIGURE 16. New signs with descriptions and examples as suggested by their creators</caption>
# The Missing Scripts Project

Johannes Bergerhausen · Thomas Huot-Marchand

*Abstract.* The Missing Scripts Project, started in 2016, is a long-term initiative that aims to identify writing systems which are not yet encoded in the Unicode standard. As of today, there are still 140 scripts not yet to be used on computers and smart phones.

The first step in 2018 was a web site and a silk screen poster presenting one glyph for each of the 290 world's writing systems: www.worldswritingsystems.org.

The project is a joint effort of ANRT Nancy, France; IDG Mainz, Germany and SEI, Berkeley, USA.

## Visible Speech, 1867

Alexander Melville Bell, a Scottish phonetician, developed a universal phonetic notation system called 'Visible Speech' which could represent every sound in every human language. The abstract, often circular symbols, could also help the deaf learn to understand spoken language. Melville Bell's son Alexander Graham Bell, continued his father's work on 'Visible Speech', involving himself intensively with the physiognomy of the human voice. In 1876, he would submit his new invention to the patent office: the telephone.

## International Phonetic Alphabet, 1888

The International Phonetic association, established in 1886 by the French linguist Paul-Édouard Passy, introduced the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in 1888. These characters were developed on the basis of Latin and Greek characters, revealing the bias of the researchers

Johannes Bergerhausen

<figure><img src="image_147.png" /></figure>

0000-0001-5235-6779

Hochschule Mainz, School of Design, Holzstraße 36, D-55116 Mainz, Germany

E-mail: bergerhausen@hs-mainz.de

Thomas Huot-Marchand

Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT), School of Art and Design Nancy, 1, place Charles Cartier-Bresson, 54013 Nancy Cedex, France

E-mail: thomas.huot-marchand@anrt-nancy.fr

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 4.

Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 439–454. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-huot

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-6-1, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-8-5
of that time. They missed the chance of taking more appropriate char-
acters from other writing systems.

*Intergalactic Network, 1962*

J. C. R. Licklider, an American psychologist, formulated the idea of an
'Intergalactic Computer Network'. The computers of that time could fill
up entire rooms. A year later, he half-jokingly referred to his colleagues
as 'Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network'. But
it was less of a joke than he had imagined. Within 7 years, Licklider was
one of the developers of the ARPA-net, the precursor of the Internet.

ASCII, 1963

Bob Berner, a computer scientist at IBM, led a group of engineers devel-
oping the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, widely
known as ASCII. No one imagined at the time that a purely American
character encoding standard would still be in use on every computer in
the 21st century. ASCII defined 95 typographic symbols and 33 control
codes used to communicate between computers. The standard, which
proved itself to be fundamental to the early Internet, was integrated as
a subset of Unicode in 1991 and as such is nearly as well distributed as
the DNA code.

ARPA-net, 1969

50 years ago, during the same year as Woodstock and the Moon Landing, ARPA-net, named after the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and forerunner of today's Internet, went online. It originally connected four American universities each with just one computer. The first ever message delivered over the network on 29th of October, 1969 was the word 'LOG', meaning 'LOGIN'. The L and O were transmitted successfully in binary sequences but during the processing of the letter G, one of the two computers crashed.

Xerox PARC, Dynabook, 1971

Xerox corporation was so successful with their photocopy machines,
they were able to fund the archetypal technology research center in Cal-
ifornia exploring the future of office work. The team at Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC) in the 1970s would invent the signature tech-
nologies of the ensuing decades: the personal computer, the Graphical
User Interface (GUI), the laser printer, and the Ethernet.
In 1971, Xerox employees English and Lampson designed the charac-
ter generator, which was the first GUI type design program. The psy-
chologist and PARC researcher Alan Kay, who foresaw, with his Dyna-
book concept, the development of the laptop by 20 years, tells us in a
speech in 1986: "Here is an interesting thing: What do you do when you
are doing a rough draft and you are printing it out in Times Roman?
And the answer is: you use our own handwriting! I never understood
why this didn't catch on [in type design]."

*Writing, Typing*

We informally say we are ‘writing’ on a computer. Of course, we do not mean we are writing by hand (Chirography) but rather we are ‘typing’ from the Greek τυπογραφία: Typographia: writing with types. This is an abstract process. One no longer writes or draws an ‘A’ but rather types on the ‘A’ key and an <A> is displayed on the screen. This is still, in principle, the same process as with a typewriter.

*Interpress, 1982*

Since he could not get any support or interest for the page description
language he developed at Xerox PARC, John Warnock quit his job and
went on to found his own company. He called his new software Post-
Script and his company Adobe.

*Xerox and Apple, 1984*

The Xerox-PARC researcher, and later co-founder of Unicode, Joseph D. Becker, published the groundbreaking paper 'Multilingual Word Processing' in *Scientific American*, where the important distinction is made between characters and glyphs. In the same year, Steve Jobs presented the first Macintosh, which employed and further developed many ideas pioneered at Xerox PARC.

Unicode 88

In his nine-page paper 'Unicode88', Joseph D. Becker foresees the "need for a new, world-wide ASCII". When humanity develops worldwide networked computers, the Latin ASCII letters will no longer be sufficient. Becker outlines the main features of the Unicode Consortium, which would be founded two years later.
*Apple Newton, 1997*

After 12 years at Next and Pixar, Steve Jobs returned to the first company he founded. It would not take him long to stop the development of the Newton platform with its shaky handwriting recognition. Jobs remarked in 2003 at the *All Things Digital* conference: “It’s really slow to write stuff [by hand]! You could never keep up with your email if you had to write it all out”.

*World Standard*

Unicode 12.1, released in May 2019, encodes 137,929 characters. This means that today exactly 150 scripts can be used on computers (and smartphones). Every year, new characters are added to this world standard. These can then be found in the operating system updates of all computers (including smartphones). Among these new characters, new emojis are added every year.

The Unicode consortium decides which characters are typographically available to people—and which are not. The consortium, registered in Mountain View, California, is primarily made up of representatives from the IT industry giants. Apart from Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM, or Microsoft, very few state institutions are represented. The academic world is also hardly represented. An exception would be the Script Encoding Initiative (SEI), led by the linguist Dr. Deborah Anderson from the Department of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. The Mainz university project decodeunicode is a liaison member without voting rights.

Any institution or company can become a member of the consortium. Through a 'full membership' at $21,000 USD per year, one has the right to vote and can participate in decisions.

The Internet speaks Unicode worldwide. There is no competition. For example, without this standard we could not send text messages from the Netherlands to Russia today. It would be nearly impossible to have both Cyrillic and Latin letters in text messages without Unicode.

*Languages ≠ Scripts ≠ Countries, 2019*

Brief overview: Ethnologue.com catalogs 7,111 known living languages, SEI Berkeley defines 290 scripts and the United Nations has 193 member states.

*Cultural Achievement*

Unicode is increasingly becoming a collection of human writing systems. For us, this is not only a technical, but also a cultural achievement.
It amazes us that such a utopian project has gained real international acceptance and is available on every computer. The world speaks, at least on this level, one language.

## Characters and Glyphs

Unicode defines many technical specifications, but the principle of character encoding is simple. Each character is assigned a name and a hexadecimal number. Thus the letter A is encoded as LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A with the number U+0041 (41 is hexadecimal for decimal 65).

So when one sends an A by SMS or e-mail, one does not send the graphic form (glyph) of the letter, only the code. The receiving device receives a binary string, interprets the hexadecimal value and represents the matching glyph.

Unicode does not specify the appearance of characters. This is the work of the type designer. The transcription through code is akin to the Platonic concept of the character free of any particular form. Unicode encodes characters—not glyphs.

## When Is an A an A?

Is it even possible to give a character a determinate form? For example, one might claim that the upper half of a capital A is always pointed, but it is easy to find examples where this is not the case.

Likewise, there are many glyphs for A that have no crossbeam but are still easily recognized as A.

Part of the definition of the character A might be that it is one of the 26 (or 52) letters of the Latin alphabet, that it is read from left to right, and that it usually stands for the sound /a/. However, such properties are emergent from the context and are form-independent.

We claim that an A is only really defined through its encoding into Unicode. Only thus can there be an international agreement about the character.

The definition of a character involves cultural conventions. If the glyphs look too similar, the name or code position can help distinguish them. For example, the two characters ⌜ and ⌝ are almost indistinguishable, but in Unicode the former is called BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DOWN AND LEFT, so it is always a perfect right-angle, while the latter is called TIRONIAN SIGN ET, a glyph from Roman times whose angle may vary.
## Missing Scripts

Unicode has significantly reduced the relative visual presence of the Western (or, rather, the Latin) world. At the time of ASCII, it was almost impossible to display 'exotic' letters on the computer.

Imagine you could not use your own script on your smartphone. Unicode has remedied this for most writing systems. 150 scripts are usable today, a great success.

But there is still a lot to do. A first step of the Missing Scripts project at the Institut Designlabor Gutenberg (IDG) at Mainz University of Applied Sciences and at the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT) in Nancy, was to ask Dr. Deborah Anderson (SEI) how many writing systems are missing from Unicode. After consulting her experts worldwide, she responded with an amazing number: 140. Only about half of the world's writing systems are available on today's computers.

## United Nation of Type

Without binary code, scripts cannot be used on computers. This means that cultures whose writing systems are not accommodated by Unicode cannot be digitized, stored or published as texts without conversion to binary codes. Additionally, any culture so affected cannot compose and distribute new digital texts either. Every writing culture in the world should be able to disseminate and extend its cultural heritage on all modern devices. Unicode is becoming a kind of assembly of the united typographic nations. Here, every culture should be represented.

## Historical Scripts

32 historical scripts have not yet been included in Unicode. The question here is whether it is worth encoding a script whose last users have died out thousands of years ago.

In a sense, no script is ever really extinct. Somewhere in the world there are scientists (or enthusiasts) still working with these historical texts. For example, there are around 3,000 people worldwide who can read and write cuneiform. This community also wants to use these characters in text editing programs. This is why they have to be encoded and included.

At the University of Bonn, there is a 10-year project to develop a dictionary of Mayan hieroglyphs. Without character encoding, these researchers will be at a loss. The dictionary won't be able to be published online (or be printed) unless the characters have been encoded and glyphs designed. Once this is done, it becomes available to humanity and can be copied and passed on freely. Perhaps if all Mayan
texts become available online, new possibilities for research will emerge
through text comparisons and full-text search.

If we want to achieve the utopian-real goal of one day making avail-
able all the texts of humanity, we must also encode extinct scripts and
digitize their texts.

7 out of 290

Incidentally, of the 290 scripts, there are exactly 7 that have not yet been deciphered. One is *rongorongo*, a playground for researchers and adventurers.

The World's Writing Systems

As a first step in the long-term project 'Missing Scripts' of IDG Mainz, ANRT Nancy and SEI Berkeley, we researched and designed a representative glyph for each of the 290 writing systems. In this collection, the letter A represents the Latin alphabet as the letter Omega Ω is internationally recognized as Greek.

In cases where there was no representative character, for alphabets
we used the character for the sound /a/, for syllabic scripts the charac-
ter for /ka/, and for pictographic-ideographic scripts, the character for
human body.

In this way, typographic forms have been developed for some writing
systems for the first time. This collection was presented with a poster
and website www.worldswritingsystems.org in 2018. Research and type
design were carried out by Johannes Bergerhausen, Arthur Francietta,
Jérôme Knebusch and Morgane Pierson at ANRT.

The Unicode Proposals

In order for a new character or writing system to be implemented in
Unicode, a formal application must be made. In 2019, there are exactly
71 proposals for scripts that have not yet been implemented in Unicode.
These we have presented in the reading room in alphabetical order. Each
proposal can be studied in peace. They have been available online for
years but are hardly known. Why have some proposals still not yet been
accepted though they were filed years ago?

Acceptance into Unicode is not trivial. First, it must be proven that a community that uses these characters exists. This is sometimes more difficult than one might think. Subsequently, the applicant must prove that the character set is complete. Each character must have a unique name according to scientific standards. It is often not easy to find an expert for an obscure script. Additionally, the information from the community of users is often contradictory.
*When Is a Script a Script?*

Scripts are writing systems, collections of visual characters which can completely represent at least one human language. Therefore emojis are not scripts. Sometimes two experts, when presented with two similar scripts, cannot concur whether or not they are 'only' glyph variants of the same script. This is why, for instance in 2001, the Etruscan or Venetian alphabet of the Italian peninsula were encoded under the generic category "Old Italic".

*Missing Living Scripts*

In Unicode, living scripts take priority. Why do we then still find, among the 71 scripts which have been proposed but not yet accepted, 39 living scripts? Can it have anything to do with the fact that these are used in regions which promise no commercial potential (as yet) for the IT sector? Why has there never been a Unesco project to ensure that these scripts are taken up as quickly as possible into Unicode? This is surprising given that everyone has been talking about digitization for so long.

*Research at ANRT, Nancy*

There are scripts for which no confirmed typographic form has been established. During encoding, the script inevitably must make the leap from chirography (handwriting) to typography. This is where research at the ANRT in Nancy, headed by Director Thomas Huot-Marchand, begins.

As part of the IDG, ANRT and SEI's 18-month research program Missing Scripts, post-graduate students at ANRT often develop a typographic form for the first time. They consult all available documents and do handwritten and typographic analyses. If they work with a living script, they obtain feedback from the user community. This research program started in 2016.

*Not Neutral*

The reference glyphs for our project were designed in a monolinear, non-contrasting manner to make the shapes comparable. As with 'conventional' font design, the impression is that all the glyphs were designed with the same (analogue) instrument.

Critics might say that this is a Western approach. We would agree. Our typographic eyes were trained in the 'Western World'. But one
might also draw these characters in another style. It is easy to imagine writing all the shapes with a ballpoint pen. Our glyphs do not claim universality.

Can there be a 'neutral' shape for all glyphs?—No. There is no neutral font. A more general style would perhaps emerge if one were to draw all the characters with a finger in the sand (i.e., monolinear rounded, stroke width: one finger). Characters have been written in this manner for millennia, does that mean a finger is a neutral tool?

Latin letters are still very dominant worldwide. Our hardware and software is mainly made in the USA. In type specimen books in the 'Western' world, 'other' writing systems are called 'exotic' or 'Non-Latin' even today. This is as problematic as the term 'World Music'.

## General Visual Typographic Laws

Are there 'universal' visual laws according to which the letters of all the most diverse cultures, at least those on this planet, are shaped?—We think so. We must discover these laws. We would like to suggest one principle: gravity.

Every type designer knows that there is a 'visual gravity' in the way a character 'stands up'. They 'lie' on the paper. An <O> can visually 'tilt' left or right if it is not drawn correctly. An <M> stands sturdily with both legs on the script line, an invisible but imaginary floor. We humans project things we have learned through our natural senses into these glyphs. Therefore, I think that gravity is a first element of the general visual typographic laws.

## Two Ships Passing in the Night

It remains astonishing how persistently many disciplines keep to themselves and don't see what is going on around them. This is how it is possible that the excellent work Dr. Deborah Anderson has been doing at SEI since 2002 is still today so little known in the worlds of typography and type design. Likewise, should the Irish linguist Michael Everson, author of the most Unicode proposals, be invited much more often to typography conferences?

Interest in the commercial sector only emerges when smartphones begin to be marketed in a new country and suddenly it becomes apparent that the people there use an obscure script which is not yet available from the operating system. Only Google's Noto-project has the universal vision which is capable of grappling with this task.
## Funding for Encoding

It is complex work to linguistically and typographically systematize an exotic writing system and to write a proposal for Unicode. Outside of the passionate amateurs, experts cannot sustain this work without funding. It is all the more astounding how the IT sector does not support funding a comprehensive vision. In such a situation, we can only call for Dr. Deborah Anderson's SEI to be funded.

## All Texts, All Times

The human project and human dream to make all the texts of all the ages digitally available is today within reach. The time is ripe. This massive undertaking must only take place once in the history of humanity, in the 21st century.

One example: The Murty Classical Library of India aims to make accessible modern translations of all classic Indian texts in print and online. In the first five years, 22 volumes in 12 different languages have been published.

A complex, multilingual typographic system is needed for this unique 100-year publishing project.

## Missing Completed, 2044

Unicode took 27 years to encode 150 scripts. At the same pace, all the writing systems of humanity will be united in a universal code around the year 2044. It will have taken a little more than 50 years to encode approximately 5,000 years of written history. The prerequisite for making all texts of mankind available digitally would be created.

## References

* André, Jacques and Jean-Louis Estève, eds. (1995). *Ligatures & caractères contextuels*. Vol. 22. Cahiers Gutenberg. Rennes.

* André, Jacques and Michel Goossens, eds. (1995). *Codage des caractères et multi-linguisme: de l'ASCII à Unicode*. Vol. 20. Cahiers Gutenberg. Rennes.

* Barthes, Roland (1981). *Das Reich der Zeichen*. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

* Becker, Joseph D. (September 1984). "Mehrsprachige Textverarbeitung." In: *Spektrum der Wissenschaft*, pp. 42–54.

* Benjamin, Walter (1928). *Einbahnstraße*. Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt.

* Bergerhausen, Johannes (2014). *Digitale Keilschrift / Digital Cuneiform*. Mainz: Hermann Schmidt.

* Bergerhausen, Johannes and Siri Poarangan (2011). "decodeunicode—Die Schrift-zeichen der Welt." https://decodeunicode.org/.
<figure><img src="image_148.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Screenshot of www.worldswritingsystems.org, scripts sorted by time of creation</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_149.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. Screenshot of www.worldswritingsystems.org, scripts sorted by geographical region</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_150.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 3. Screenshot of www.worldwritingsystems.org, scripts sorted by name, sorted by Latin Alphabet</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_151.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 4. Screenshot of www.worldwritingsystems.org, scripts sorted by time of Unicode encoding</figcaption></figure>
b

ADLAM

AFRICA

1980s — today

b̈

AFĀKA

AMERICA

1901 — today

m

AHOM

SOUTH ASIA

15 c — today

y

ARABIC

MIDDLE EAST

6 c — today

U

ARMENIAN

EUROPE

406 — today

LL

AVESTAN

MIDDLE EAST

6 c — today

b

AVOIULI

OCEANIA

1980s — today

i

BA (FULA z)

AFRICA

1963 — today

<caption>FIGURE 5. Screenshot of www.worldswritingsystems.org, scripts sorted by status (living or historical)</caption>

Berry, John D., ed. (2002). *Language, Culture, Type*. New York, NY: Graphis.

Bringhurst, Robert (1999). *The Elements of Typographic Style*. 2nd ed. Hartley and Marks.

Cajori, Florian (1993). *A history of mathematical notation*. Mineola, NY: Dover.

Consortium, The Unicode (2006). *The Unicode Standard*. Mountain View, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright (1996). *The world's writing systems*. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Dehaene, Stanislas (2010). *Lesen*. München: Knaus.

Dürscheid, Christa (2012). *Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik*. Göttingen: UTB.

Eco, Umberto (2002). *Einführung in die Semiotik*. Stuttgart: UTB, Fink.

— (2009). *Die unendliche Liste*. München: Hanser.

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# Beyond the Semantic

## Typographic Representation
of Ancient Monetary Inscriptions

Morgane Pierson

*Abstract.* The PIM research project (meaning "Police pour les Inscriptions Moné-
taires") aims to produce a suitable tool for transcribing the information con-
tained on monetary inscriptions, beyond their semantic content. The textual
information and graphic features that a coin carries can provide many valuable
information regarding its origin and the society in which it was minted (Codine-
Trécourt and Guillaume, 2012). Since there was previously no digital font that
could fully and accurately render the monetary inscriptions, this project was ini-
tiated in 2013 by Florence Codine, curator in charge of the Merovingian coins
at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and is currently supervised by
Frédérique Duyrat.

### 1. The PIM project

Since Gutenberg’s invention of his printing system with movable type, technological advances have continuously transformed transcribing methods in scholarly research. Various transcription tools have facilitated researchers’ access to sources, processing of data and academic publishing. Digital humanities has opened up new possibilities for type design as well as other research fields, which until the twentieth century were part of book paradigm. However, despite recent technological progress, researchers still suffer from the lack of suitable tools such as digital typefaces, interfaces and encoding to support their work. The absence of well-designed typefaces, and often using of images instead of encoded text, have been two of the main shortcomings in conducting research on various historical fields. Therefore, a significant contribution to digital humanities research will be made by creation and use of fonts in digital publishing projects and different online platforms.

Morgane Pierson

<figure><img src="image_153.png" /></figure>

0000-0002-0334-0292

Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (Nancy)

Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris)

E-mail: pierson.morgane@icloud.com

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 4.

Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 455–488. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-pier

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-6-1, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-8-5
<figure><img src="image_154.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Judean, Greek, Nabatean, and Phoenician coins, BnF</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_155.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. (a) Department of coins and medals, BnF, Paris. (b) Gallica Web site. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris</figcaption></figure>
## 1.1. The Bibliothèque nationale de France

The BnF houses one of the largest collections of coins, most of which, have already been digitised and are publicly available online through the Gallica website<fnref n="1" />. Thanks to this extensive digital resource, and software called NumiPal (Thevenin, 2018) (Fig. 3), specialists from the BnF's department of coins and medals were able to establish an inventory of the characters. NumiPal helps scholars to study the coins very closely and most importantly, annotate the inscriptions (Fig. 4). Once the annotation has been carried out, all the annotated allographs are recorded for each coin and for each allograph all the identified forms are inventoried with the reference number in the online software. This database makes it possible to find every form which have been assigned to a single allograph.

## 1.2. The Atelier National de Recherche Typographique

In 2013, the department of coins, medals, and antiques at the BnF began a partnership with the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique (ANRT)<fnref n="2" />, to develop a digital typeface that would bring together all identified stylistic variants of the inscriptions on the coins, in a consistent manner. This project began with Elvire Volk Leonovitch, a student at ANRT, and under the direction of Thomas Huot-Marchand (Volk Leonovitch, 2014). Initially, the main goal was to develop a digital font for the transcription of the Merovingian monetary inscriptions on screen and paper. While previously, image files had to be inserted in editorial projects to display the appropriate variant, the implementation of Unicode-encoded fonts presented a significant evolution for digital humanities—in particular for digital platforms such as online catalogues.

Based on the classification of the letters found on the coins from the BnF, which was conducted by a team of researchers, an accurate and relevant interpretation of the various letterforms can be deduced. However, it is important to find the best approach or possible compromise in response to different criteria of readability in contemporary readership and loyalty to historical models. The goal is therefore to combine the advantages of imitative transcription with those of interpretative transcription. In this 'diplomatic' approach, the ontograph, which is the 'standard' representation of the grapheme, and the allograph, which is a morphological variant of the letter are distinguished. Unicode does not allow the integration of the variants and focuses on providing a unique code for every character, language, program, and platform. Admittedly,

<footnote n="1">1. https://gallica.bnf.fr/</footnote>

<footnote n="2">2. https://anrt-nancy.fr/en/presentation-en/</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_156.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_157.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 4. Example of coin's annotations on NumiPal</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_158.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 5. Merovingian ontograph and allographs <A></figcaption></figure>

it exists variant selectors (see Chinese, Emojis...) but their use and their implementation are too constraining and not adapted to the case of the monetary inscriptions. In the PIM project, the allographs share the same code as the concerned ontograph, and the viewing of the glyphs variants is done through the OpenType features in the font. From a technical point of view, the OT stylistic sets (SS01-SS20) were not used due to the limitation of only 20 variants for each glyph, which is not sufficient for numismatic. Instead, character variants (CV01-CV20) have been used, which allows the creation of 99 variants for one single glyph.

## 1.3. The PIM Typeface

The Meroweg typeface was deliberately designed without serifs-like details to accommodate various letter structures. Stems are slightly flared and heavy to produce a visible typographic contrast and to distinguish it from other typefaces, used to typeset the text around it.

In 2019, the PIM project was extended to support other collections of coins from Italy, Greece, Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. The author has been tasked with designing typefaces for Phoenician, Cypriot, Archaic Greek, Etruscan, Umbrian, Oscan, Palaeohispanic, Lycian, Palaeo-Hebrew, Kharoshthi, and Nabatean writing systems. In the beginning, it was estimated that this typeface family would consist of
<figure><img src="image_159.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 6. (a) Meroweg variants. (b) Example of Meroweg in use. (Volk Leonovitch, 2014)</figcaption></figure>

1066 glyphs for each allograph, however, so far 2440 glyphs have been designed, and this number is expected to grow even larger as the project proceeds. Even though the relationship between the early writing systems is rather complex, working on such a corpus is a great way to study and compare the evolution of the alphabets and exchanges between cultures.

<figure><img src="image_160.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 7. Family tree of the writing systems concerned in the PIM project</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_161.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 8. PIM writing systems, source: The Missing Scripts project, http://theworldswritingsystems.org/</figcaption></figure>

<table><thead><tr><th>Coins</th><th>Region</th><th>Unicode</th><th>Enc.</th><th>All.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="5">Greek coins</td><td>Archaïc Greek</td><td>U+0370-03FF</td><td>28</td><td>130</td></tr><tr><td>Old Italic (Ombrian, Oscan, and Etruscan)</td><td>U+10300-1032F</td><td>32</td><td>117</td></tr><tr><td>Cypriot</td><td>U+10800-1083F</td><td>55</td><td>52</td></tr><tr><td>Lycian and Lydian</td><td>U+10280-1029F</td><td>29</td><td>101</td></tr><tr><td>Brahmi</td><td>U+11000-1107F</td><td>65</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Kharoshti</td><td>U+10A00-10A5F</td><td>66</td><td>173</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Iberian and Punic coins</td><td>Palaeohispanic (Iberian corpus)</td><td>not yet encoded</td><td>59</td><td>178</td></tr><tr><td>Phoenician-Punic (phenico-punic corpus)</td><td>U+10900-109AF</td><td>29</td><td>216</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="3">Phoenician, Levantine, Judean and Nabataean coins</td><td>Phoenician</td><td>U+10900-109AF</td><td>29</td><td>216</td></tr><tr><td>Hebrew (Judean corpus)</td><td>U+0590-05FF</td><td>22</td><td>71</td></tr><tr><td>Nabatean</td><td>U+10880-108AF</td><td>40</td><td>62</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 2. Overview of the Writing Systems

### 2.1. Phoenician

Integrating the legend in publications has always been a challenge for the numismatic researcher. Especially in the context of Phoenician which had greatly evolved over the centuries. For instance, in 1867 and through the initiative of Ernest Renan, the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres commissioned the Imprimerie Nationale to engrave transcription characters to publish a study of all known Semitic inscriptions
(Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1907) entitled *Corpus In-
scriptionum Semiticarum*. In the case of the PIM project, the coins from
the Phoenician cities with usable legends—all of which are from the Bnf
collection—are dated from the 5th to the 1st century BC. Visually close
to the *Phénicien classique* engraved by the Imprimerie Nationale, the on-
tographs of the PIM Phoenician typeface are based on the inscription of
the Eshmunazar II sarcophagus.

The legends on the coins produced in the Phoenician cities during
the high period (either under Persian domination, or a little less in the
Hellenistic period) display neat and easily recognizable letterforms. It
is deduced that authority responsible for minting had paid attention to
their production. The care given to the coins projected the political
power of these cities and helped them expand their network (Fig. 11).
With the appearance of bronze coins under the Hellenistic domination
(Ptolemaic dynasty, then Seleucid), the inscription gradually deteriorated, since bronze coins became dominant and more difficult to mint.
The domination of the Greeks from 331 BC (from Alexander the Great)
enabled their language to become widely used by the elites and from
the 2nd century, coins were gradually minted under the influence of the
dominant culture, which was Hellenistic.

The bronze coin shown in Fig. 12. has been minted under Antiochos
IV, a Seleucid ruler at the Hellenistic period around 175 to 164 BC, who
issued an incredible amount of bronze coins in his territories and pro-
duced as much coins as all its predecessors. With regard to the Seleucid
coins, much of the monetary finds in excavations are from Antiochos
IV's period. The presence of Greek and Phoenician characters is vis-
ible on those coins (as the lamed, allograph number 7, samek 9, dalet
3, noun 9, and mem 19), which shows the evolution of culture, and the
place of the Greek language during these periods. With the Greek domi-
nation, the elites gradually became Hellenized and coexistence of Greek
and Phoenician inscriptions signified a mixed and multilingual society—
even though the majority of the population was illiterate.

The variations of the Phoenician letterforms in the BnF collections
are significant and for an alphabet of 22 letters, 160 variants have been
identified. Therefore, all these allographs have been included in the
PIM typeface with a standard of the ontographs, which is more con-
sensual and easier to identify. Due to the heterogeneous qualities of the
coins, the aim was to find a suitable representation based on the inscrip-
tions, references, and more importantly, analysis and the descriptions
provided by researchers at the BnF.

Since scholars will be the primary users of such typefaces, it was es-
sential to conceive an accurate tool to facilitate their research. For in-
stance, the PIM project has aided researchers to determine that the al-
lograph 'aleph 20' (fig.14) was only represented on coins from Carthage
that feature an elephant. It was concluded from such observations that
<figure><img src="image_162.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 11. Phoenician silver shekel, 350–333 BCE, BnF</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_163.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 12. Phoenician bronze coin, 175–164 BCE, BnF</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_164.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 14. Punic coin from Carthage and the allograph Aleph 20</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_165.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 15. Phoenician Mem variants</figcaption></figure>

some allographs could be traced back to specific minting workshops. Cataloguing specific allographs also enables researchers to document the evolution of each letterform, and its geographical variations. This would enable numismatists to develop precise historical and geographical information from the study of letter variations, including the engraving workshop where the coin was minted. This approach to research, assisted by 'material turn' theories in which physical artifacts are considered meaningful embodiments of practices, seems to have regained momentum over the past decades in the humanities and social sciences.

Punic language, which was used mostly in North Africa, is related to a branch of Phoenician called Phoenician-Punic. In the PIM corpus, 88 allographs are in common with the Phoenician from a total of 241 allographs. For instance, a Punic silver coin, from 300 to 289 BC (fig. 16), has been studied in 1978 by G. K. Jenkins, in *Coins of Punic Sicily* in which two different reproductions of the inscription can be found: first, in the iconography section which is a real scale photography of the coin, and
<figure><img src="image_166.png" /></figure>

Mint workshop: Sicilia

Period: 300-289 BCE

Author: Entella

Material: Silver (16,43 g)

273

ΜΑΚΡΩΝ ΚΛΙΜΩΝ

<figure><img src="image_167.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 16. Silver tetradrachm, Carthage, 300—289 BCE, BnF. Jenkins, *Coins of Punic Sicily*, 1978</figcaption></figure>

second is the transcription in Jenkins' hand in the legends catalogue with a reference number (Jenkins, 1978, pp. 5-68). Presently, thanks to the new technology, it is possible to have a high-quality image of the coin and the transcription with a digital font. It is also possible to integrate the transcription in the text with the transliteration, and in this way, make it more readable. This also facilitates the creation of a list of the collection's inscriptions in order to be compared easily.
G.KENNETH JENKINS

COINS OF PUNIC SICILY *

Part 4 **

CARTHAGE SERIES 5-6

Introduction

As already stated in part 3 it seems clear from the evidence of hoards that Carthage series 5, Melqart head/horse head, should be roughly of the same phase as the Syracusan coins of Agathokles with Kore head/Nike and trophy, minted most probably after Agathokles' return from Africa and in fact between the years 305 and 295 B.C. For a summary of early third century hoards containing Carthage series 5 coins, see the table of hoards at the end of this instalment. It is evident enough that Carthage series 5 and the Agathokles «Nike» type tend to coincide. This conclusion is set off by a very slightly earlier hoard, Pachino 1957 (IGCH 2151), of the late fourth century, which contains neither the Agathokles Kore/Nike type nor the Melqart head/Horse head, but only the preceding phase of each mint — from Syracuse the quadriga tetradrachms of Agathokles and from Carthage series 3 Kore head/Horse head. On these general reckonings we may assume that Carthage series 5 should start about 300 B.C. There is no easy way of deciding howlong a series is involved; if it is accepted — as will presently be argued — that Carthage series 5 is to be envisaged as a parallel production by two separate mints, this will in any case tend to telescope the possible duration of the series. Provisionally we may think of a period of about a decade for the whole series, in which case it would come to an end byabout the time of Agathokles' death (289 B.C.). Third century hoards containing series 5 do not, apparently, include any Sicilian coins later than Agathokles. That in broad terms series 5 must be defined as twoparallel series seems virtually inevitable. In the first place we have a definition by legends. Series 5 a is the mint of the army signed כָּל־מַיִחַק or 'MMHNT or 'MHMHNT (People of the Camp). Series 5 b is the mint of the «quaestors» signed כָּל־מַיִחַק or MHSBM. The only complication is that a few issues from the mhsbm mint are signed כָּל־מָחַי or 'mmhnt instead but these as we shall see are clearly exceptional and in fact form an integral part of them hsbm mint series. The relative representation of the two series in hoards gives little indication as to the relation between the two series. In the Cefalù hoard there are five specimens of each; in the Megara Hyblaia

<caption>FIGURE 17. Reproduction of the Jenkins' article with the integration of the legends using the PIM typeface</caption>
## 2.2. Archaic Greek

Archaic Greek has been the subject of many studies and the entire variants were identified in *The Local Script of Archaic Greece* by Lilian Hamilton Jeffery (Fig. 19). Considering abundance of sources, two standards from different periods have been designed, allowing expansion of the use of the PIM typeface in other studies. The most recent letterforms are based on the 4 century BC and closer to the current form of Greek capitals (Jeffery, 1963). For the second standard, the characteristics of the letters are from 6th century BC (Kraay, 1966).

<figure><img src="image_168.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 18. PIM Archaic Greek (left: 400 BCE—right: 600 BCE)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_169.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 19. Jeffery, *The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece*, 1963</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_170.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 20. PIM Archaic Greek showing the variants</figcaption></figure>

Comparing the same Greek coins from different periods and minting workshops, makes it possible to see the differences in the letterforms according to the period and the engravers, who were often illiterate. The coin shown on Fig. 20. depicts Heracles wearing a lion's skin and on the reverse side, there is an image of Zeus on a throne, and on his right, there is the inscription *Alexander* for *Alexander the Great*.
<figure><img src="image_171.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 21. Greek silver coins, BnF</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_172.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 22. Greek silver coin, 175–164 BCE, BnF</figcaption></figure>
## 2.3. Etruscan, Oscan, and Umbrian

The Old Italic is a convention adopted for Unicode. It unifies a number of related historical alphabets from the Italian peninsula which were used for non-Indo-European languages. However, the unification of these alphabets into a single Old Italic script requires language-specific fonts because the glyphs most commonly used may differ depending on the language being represented (Everson, Jenkins, Judicibus, and Anderson, 2000). In the PIM project the main focus is on the Etruscan, the Oscan, and the Umbrian alphabets. Therefore, researchers will have access to different font files for each writing system.

<figure><img src="image_173.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 23. Oscan characters and their transcription using the PIM Oscan typeface.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_174.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_175.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_176.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 24. PIM Etruscan, Neo-Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian.</figcaption></figure>

One of the features of working on monetary inscriptions is that sometimes, it is not possible to reconstitute the whole alphabet (Fig. 23). Further researches are required in order to find the appropriate ontograph and complete the typeface to make it suitable for subsequent research projects.
## 2.4. Paleo-Hebrew

Paleo Hebrew, also known as Proto-Hebrew, was the script that was used in the historic kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Yardeni, 2002). By comparing the letterforms of the Hebrew, the Paleo-Hebrew and its variants, with the Phoenician, it is possible to deduce the ductus and the traces order. For instance, with the letter Beth, the recurrence of a closed stroke on top, which is open in Hebrew, and a vertical stroke going down to finish almost horizontal can be noticed. In the letter Tsadi, there is a stroke that comes from the top to join in the middle of a long vertical stroke by a movement of up and down (Fig. 25). This kind of analysis is essential in this work in which the aim is not to make a faithful revival with the same shape, but to show the basic stroke which is more relevant.

<figure><img src="image_177.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 25. Traces order of Hebrew, Phoenician, and Paleo-Hebrew characters</figcaption></figure>

The coin in Fig. 27. is from Jerusalem and dated around AD 67-68 and the inscription above the chalice shows that it is the shekel of Israel in Paleo-Hebrew characters. On the reverse, in a border of dots, is written Holy Jerusalem around a branch carrying three pomegranates. A modern Hebrew was added as a complementary font to translate the Paleo-Hebrew inscriptions, which would allow the researcher to transcribe, in the right language, and the right sounds, without using the transliteration.
<table><caption>FIGURE 26. PIM Hebrew, Paleo-Hebrew, and Phoenician</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Hebrew</th><th>Paleo-Hebrew</th><th>Phoenician</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>ALEPH</td><td>א</td><td>ז</td><td>כ</td></tr><tr><td>BETH</td><td>ב</td><td>פ</td><td>ג</td></tr><tr><td>GIMEL</td><td>ג</td><td>ה</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>DALET</td><td>ד</td><td>ו</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>HE</td><td>ה</td><td>כ</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>VAV</td><td>ו</td><td>ז</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>ZAYIN</td><td>ז</td><td>ח</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>HET</td><td>ח</td><td>ט</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>TET</td><td>ט</td><td>י</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>YOD</td><td>י</td><td>כ</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>KAF</td><td>כ</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>LAMED</td><td>ל</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>MEM</td><td>מ</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>NUN</td><td>נ</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>SAMECH</td><td>ס</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>AYIN</td><td>ע</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>PE</td><td>פ</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>TSADE</td><td>צ</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>QOF</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>RESH</td><td>ר</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>SHIN</td><td>ש</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr><tr><td>TAV</td><td>ת</td><td>ק</td><td>ק</td></tr></tbody></table>
Mint workshop: Jerusalem, ירושלים
יהודה
Period: 67 - 68 AD
Author: Simon Maccabée, שמעון התרסי
Material: Silver (14.19 g)

<figure><img src="image_178.png" /></figure>

yrwšlym hqdwšh

Holy Jerusalem

<figure><img src="image_179.png" /></figure>

šql yšrali

Shekel of Israel - year 2

שקל ישראלי

<figure><img src="image_180.png" /></figure>

ירושלים הקדושה

<figure><img src="image_181.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 27. Judean silver hemishekel, 67–68 AD, BnF</figcaption></figure>

## 2.5. Nabatean

Some scholars have suggested that Syriac and Arabic writing systems are driven from the Nabatean script (Gruendler, 1993). As the script developed, a range of conjuncts and final forms were introduced. In the case of the PIM project, the letters found on the coins were isolated, however, if scholars require to introduce joined letters for epigraphic transcriptions, it would be possible to extend the typeface in a more cursive direction. The typeface has been designed in accordance with the Phoenician, Syriac, and Arabic letters (Fossey, 1927). A few variants have been included from the sources that were attested to make it usable for other studies.
<figure><img src="image_182.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 28. Imprimerie Nationale, *Notices sur les caractères étrangers anciens et modernes*, 1927</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_183.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 29. Gruendler, *The Development of the Arabic Scripts*, 1993</figcaption></figure>

Fig. 30 shows a Nabatean bronze coin with the inscription which reads *Aretas* [Aretas 4, King of Nabatean], and *Sbaqilat*, who was the second wife and co-ruler of Aretas IV, accompanied with their portraits on the reverse. At least 4 different degrees of transcription is possible for this inscription. The first is an 'imitative' or 'diplomatic' transcription by using the variants of the typeface. The second is a 'semantic transcription' by using the ontograph, which is a more conventional form of the script. Under a scholar, this could be written in the correct direction from right to left, but sometimes the transcription is written from left to right. Then there is the transliteration, with the use of roman characters, and lastly, there is the translation.
<table><caption>FIGURE 30. PIM Phoenician, PIM Nabatean, Noto Sans Syriac, and Adobe Arabic</caption><thead><tr><th>Semitic alphabet</th><th>Phoenician</th><th>Nabatean</th><th>Syriac</th><th>Arabic</th><th>Letters</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Aleph</td><td>aleph</td><td>aal</td><td>ale</td><td>alif</td><td>alif</td></tr><tr><td>Final Aleph</td><td>aleph</td><td>aal</td><td>ale</td><td>alif</td><td>alif</td></tr><tr><td>Beth</td><td>beth</td><td>beit</td><td>bet</td><td>bā</td><td>bā</td></tr><tr><td>Final Beth</td><td>beth</td><td>beit</td><td>bet</td><td>bā</td><td>bā</td></tr><tr><td>Gimmel</td><td>gimmel</td><td>gamm</td><td>gamm</td><td>gim</td><td>gīm</td></tr><tr><td>Daleth</td><td>daleth</td><td>dāl</td><td>dāl</td><td>dāl</td><td>dāl</td></tr><tr><td>He</td><td>he</td><td>he</td><td>he</td><td>hā</td><td>hā</td></tr><tr><td>Final He</td><td>he</td><td>he</td><td>he</td><td>hā</td><td>hā</td></tr><tr><td>Waw</td><td>waw</td><td>wāw</td><td>wāw</td><td>wāw</td><td>wāw</td></tr><tr><td>Zayin</td><td>zayin</td><td>zayn</td><td>zayn</td><td>zā</td><td>zā</td></tr><tr><td>Heth</td><td>heth</td><td>het</td><td>het</td><td>hā</td><td>hā</td></tr><tr><td>Teth</td><td>teth</td><td>teth</td><td>teth</td><td>tā</td><td>tā</td></tr><tr><td>Yodh</td><td>yodh</td><td>yāy</td><td>yāy</td><td>yā</td><td>yā</td></tr><tr><td>Final Yodh</td><td>yodh</td><td>yāy</td><td>yāy</td><td>yā</td><td>yā</td></tr><tr><td>Kaph</td><td>kaph</td><td>kaf</td><td>kaf</td><td>kā</td><td>kāf</td></tr><tr><td>Final Kaph</td><td>kaph</td><td>kaf</td><td>kaf</td><td>kā</td><td>kāf</td></tr><tr><td>Lamedh</td><td>lamedh</td><td>lam</td><td>lam</td><td>lam</td><td>lam</td></tr><tr><td>Final Lamedh</td><td>lamedh</td><td>lam</td><td>lam</td><td>lam</td><td>lam</td></tr><tr><td>Mem</td><td>mem</td><td>mem</td><td>mem</td><td>mā</td><td>mā</td></tr><tr><td>Final Mem</td><td>mem</td><td>mem</td><td>mem</td><td>mā</td><td>mā</td></tr><tr><td>Nun</td><td>nun</td><td>nun</td><td>nun</td><td>nūn</td><td>nūn</td></tr><tr><td>Final Nun</td><td>nun</td><td>nun</td><td>nun</td><td>nūn</td><td>nūn</td></tr><tr><td>Samek</td><td>sek</td><td>sek</td><td>sek</td><td>sek</td><td>sek</td></tr><tr><td>Ayin</td><td>ayin</td><td>ayn</td><td>ayn</td><td>ayn</td><td>ayn</td></tr><tr><td>Pe</td><td>pe</td><td>pep</td><td>pep</td><td>pep</td><td>pep</td></tr><tr><td>Sadhe</td><td>sadhe</td><td>sad</td><td>sad</td><td>sā</td><td>sā</td></tr><tr><td>Qoph</td><td>qoph</td><td>qo</td><td>qo</td><td>qā</td><td>qā</td></tr><tr><td>Resh</td><td>resh</td><td>resh</td><td>resh</td><td>resh</td><td>resh</td></tr><tr><td>Shin</td><td>shin</td><td>shin</td><td>shin</td><td>sh</td><td>sh</td></tr><tr><td>Final Shin</td><td>shin</td><td>shin</td><td>shin</td><td>sh</td><td>sh</td></tr><tr><td>Tav</td><td> tav</td><td> tav</td><td> tav</td><td> tav</td><td> tav</td></tr></tbody></table>
Mint workshop: Nabatean, Arabia Petraea العربية البتانية

Period: 9 BCE - 40 AD

Author: Arétas IV (king of Nabatean)

Material: Bronze (5.36 g)

<figure><img src="image_184.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 31. Nabatean bronze coin, 9 BCE–40 AD, BnF</figcaption></figure>

## 2.6. Lycian

The Lycian was used to write an ancient Indo-European language of Western Anatolia. It is an alphabetical script, written from left-to-right, and is either derived from Greek or closely related to it. Before the Persian conquest, the Lycians were politically organized in a federal system, and even after their submission to the Persians, the institutions inside the federal system continued to be effective. The oldest Lycian coin seems to be from the 5th century BC, that is contemporary to Xerxès, son of Darius I. The Lycia symbol is a solar emblem represented by the triquetra which is seen on most of the reverse side of the coins (Morgan, 1926).
<figure><img src="image_185.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 32. Morgan, *Manuel de Numismatique Orientale de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge*, 1926</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_186.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 33. Lycian silver stater, 410 BCE, BnF</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_187.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 34. PIM Lycian</figcaption></figure>

## 2.7. Cypriot

The Cypriot syllabary was used to write the Cypriot dialect of Greek from about 800 to 200 BCE. Structurally, the Cypriot syllabary consisted of combinations of up to twelve initial consonants and five different vowels (Anderson and Everson, 1999). In our corpus, only the coins from Amathus, Idalium, Marium, Paphos, and Salamis, have legends using the Cypriot syllabary. The local minting in the Cyprus Island begins in the 4th century BC and stop after the conquest of the island by Ptolemy I Soter in 312 BCE (Morgan, 1926).
# 3. Accessibility and Utilisation

## 3.1. License

The Open Font License<fnref n="3" /> is used (SIL-OFL) and the publication of the fonts on a public repository (GitHub) will make it possible to easily supplement, correct, extend, and distribute the fonts.

## 3.2. The Composer

The digital humanities have profoundly changed the methods of research in the human sciences, both from the point of view of access to sources and their distribution by various means of publishing. New digital tools will assist researchers to explore, disseminate, and question the established knowledge; however, it is important to continually re-evaluate their efficiency and intuitiveness. Therefore, the PIM project continues with the development of the Alpha version of an online text editor by Sylvain Julé. This composer will make it possible to display, in an open and non-proprietary format, all the writing systems covered, facilitate their keyboard entry, and allow simplified visual access to the characters variants.

# 4. Conclusion

The PIM project with a particular focus on type design, has been a productive way to study the early writing systems and understand how through the large number and various letterforms they have influenced each other. The digital humanities, one the other hand, has brought new perspectives to type design and scholarly research, with the use of digital fonts and creation of online catalogues and composers. However, despite such technological progress, practices related to typographic and graphic representation in the benefit of research have changed very little.

Once the process of inventory and classification of the glyphs is concluded, and the question of previewing or printing the work comes up, researchers often settle for ordinary characters and typefaces roughly imitate the inscriptions. Digital technology, has the potential to provide easier access to all practices, but the outcomes are often unsatisfactory, both in terms of morphological accuracy and encoding, and in the context of digital articles which are likely to be indexed and shared digitally. Often fonts with incorrect encoding, images extracted from other

<footnote n="3">3. https://opensource.org/licenses/OFL-1.1</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_188.png" /></figure>

Un menu contextuel permet d'accéder rapidement aux allographes disponibles, pour chaque ontographe sélectionné. Le codepoint Unicode reste le même, c'est le glyphe qui change, via une fonction OpenType intégrée à la fonte.

<figure><img src="image_189.png" /></figure>

Un menu permet d'exporter le texte saisi en différents formats

<caption>FIGURE 37. PIM composer, Thomas Huot-Marchand</caption>
References

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1907). *Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. Pars Secunda. Inscriptiones Aramaicas Continens*. Vol. II Fasciculus Primus. Paris: Republicae typogrpapheo.

Anderson, Deborah and Michael Everson (1999). "Final proposal to encode Aegean scripts in the UCS." https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01370-n2378.pdf.

Codine-Trécourt, Florence and Sarah Guillaume (2012). "Du plomb au pixel. Transcrire les légendes des monnaies du haut Moyen Âge." In: *Revue numismatique* 168, pp. 261-277.

Everson, Michael et al. (2000). "European Alphabetic Scripts, 7.10 Old Italic." https://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/old-italic.pdf.

Fossey, Charles, ed. (1927). *Notices sur les caractères étrangers anciens et modernes*. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.

Gruendler, Beatrice (1993). *The Development of the Arabic Scripts, From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century According to Dated Texts*. Atlanta, GA: Scolars Press.

Jeffery, Lilian H. (1963). *The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece*. Oxford Monographs on Classical Archaeology. Oxford.

Jenkins, G. K. (1978). "Coins of Punic Sicily. Part 4: Carthage." In: *Swiss Numismatic Review* 57.5-6.

Jimenes, Rémi (2013). "Gestion informatisée des écritures anciennes." In: *Document numérique* 16.3.

Kraay, Colin M. (1966). *Greek Coins*. London: Thames and Hudson.

Morgan, J. de (1926). *Manuel de numismatique orientale de l'antiquité et du moyen âge*. Basmadjian, K. J. Vol. 1. Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner.

Thevenin, Gaëlle (2018). "Projet de Polices des Inscriptions Monétaires: le cas des monnaies ibériques et carthaginoises." L'Antiquité à la BnF, https://antiquitebnf.hypotheses.org/2074.

Volk Leonovitch, Elvire (2014). *PIM. Police pour les Inscriptions Monétaires*. Nancy: Atelier National de Recherche Typographique.

Yardeni, Ada (2002). *The Book of Hebrew Script, History, Palaeography, Script Styles, Calligraphy and Design*. London, Newcastle: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press.
# Sociocultural Motivation for Spelling Variation in Modern Hebrew

Yishai Neuman

*Abstract.* Ideological tendencies and cultural preferences may at times constitute powerful factors in motivating spelling variation in variable social environments. Such tendencies and preferences may stem from religious taboo or represent modern political or seemingly-historic nuances. Since Sebba's (2007) account *Spelling and Society: The culture and politics of orthography around the world* leaves Hebrew outside of scope, the following brief account offers an overview of categories in which variable spelling conveys ideological perceptions and socio-cultural stances.

## 1. When Spelling Disagrees With Orthography

Orthography and spelling are often used interchangeably, especially by linguists, who most often overlook the subject or treat it as a means to consider phonology. The study of graphemics as a socio-semiotic discipline, however, must distinguish inherently-variable spelling from inherently-invariable orthography, i.e., the 'officially-sanctioned spelling' (Greek *ortho* = 'correct'), be the sanctioning authority a state-governed official language academy (as in France, Spain, Israel and Egypt), a prestigious printing house (early modern England) or an editor of dictionaries (Germany, USA). This means that spelling variation includes orthography among other variants, and descriptive linguistic methodology, which justifiably ignores prescriptive dictums, cannot avoid taking into consideration orthography as a relevant factor in the spelling continuum despite its inherent prescriptive component. Thus, for the sake of socio-semiotic analysis, it must be noted that while spelling displays variation across time, space and social premises, orthography—once an established institution in a given culture—changes only in leaps, sanctioned by the concerned authoritative decisions. In the case of Hebrew, a one-state language, such decisions are voted in the Academy of

Yishai Neuman

<figure><img src="image_190.png" /></figure>

0000-0001-8256-8158

Achva Academic College, Israel

E-mail: yn335@yahoo.fr

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 4.

Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 489–499. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-neum

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-6-1, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-8-5
the Hebrew Language, an official institution, legally empowered and financially sustained by the State of Israel (Fellman, 1974). Decisions on orthography may follow prevalent spelling-tendencies across society in some cases and advocate changes in spelling in other cases, which may in turn be followed by some users and ignored by others, whether for lack of knowledge or for reluctant conservatism (Moreshet, 1968; 1969).

## 2. Graphemic Euphemism Regarding Sequences <yh> and <yy>

Religious taboo in writing concerns primarily avoiding pointing the tetragrammaton יהוה <yhvh> in pointed editions of the Hebrew bible from the tenth century on. Post-Biblical works avoid writing it down altogether except in citations of entire biblical utterances (Sharvit, 1992). A cultural side effect of not writing the tetragrammaton down is the custom among observant Jews, quite pervasive in those milieus, to avoid spelling even small sequences thereof in other words. Thus, words whose spelling combines two subsequent letters of the tetragrammaton are spelled using a special apostrophe between the “holy” letters to be avoided, e.g., <בšy'h> 'problem' and <מאפייה' <m?pyy'h> 'bakery', instead of the general spelling <בšyh> and <מאפייה <m?pyyh>. Another religious taboo concerns the spelling of אלהים <?lhym>/?elohim/ 'God', modified into אלקים <?lqym> by changing the letter hey ה <h> into qof ק <q> (ibid., p. 115) by virtue of their graphetic proximity (a slightly longer stroke in the latter); this new spelling has given rise to the new euphemism /?elokim/ (Neuman, 2009, pp. 625–626).

## 3. Intentional Respelling Expressing Disapproval

One of the discourse strategies in use for expressing slight disapproval, strong opposition or fierce contempt towards an idea or entity consists of intentionally respelling words whose messages one wants to denigrate. The guiding principle of the graphemic pun is changing the spelling while keeping pronunciation intact. Whereas graffiti were the sole scene for such variations (Sebba, 2007) until the internet revolution, nowadays this practice is widespread on social media platforms.

To take a mild example, public transportation users who wish to express their dissatisfaction with the train services respell רכבת ישראל <rkbt yšr?l> /rakévet israel/ *Israel Railways Ltd.* as רקבת ישראל <rqbt yšr?l>, alluding to the root √r.q.b. ‘decay’. Similarly, dissatisfaction with the Israeli Police motivates respelling משטרה <mštrh> /mīštara/ ‘police’ into משטרע <mšṭrī>, whereby the last syllable /ra/ respelled רע <rī> means ‘bad’.
Some respellings are fiercer than others. Indeed, one of the strategies of expressing strong disapproval of the Israeli Culture Minister, thus criticizing her policy, her general anti-cultural discourse ("I haven't read Chekov") and some of her questionable public manners, consists of changing *שרת* <srt htrbvt> 'Culture Minister' into *סרת התרבות* <srt htrbvt> "culture-less".

Israeli political discourse offers the highly frequent respelling *סמול* <smvl> for *שמאל* <śmʾl> /smol/ 'left', a common practice by right-wing partisans to express fierce opposition to- and mockery of- left-wing ideas and partisans, although recently appropriated by left-wing partisans in the self-designated proactive Facebook page *סמולנים* <smvlnym> "leftists". Following similar thinking, since one of the landmarks of the Arab-Israeli Peace Process, conducted by an Israeli left-wing government in the mid '90s, was the city of Oslo (cf. the Oslo Accords), the toponym *אוסלו* <ʾvslv> *Oslo* has been respelled *עוסלו* <ʿvslv>, a kind of 'nonce spelling' (Bolinger, 1946, p. 336), whereby the letter *áyin* *ע* <ʿ> (corresponding to a pharyngeal consonant) connotes the feature [+Arab], i.e., *negative* in the respellers' set of values. This and other cases of 'phonemically-pointless áyin' probably represents the emergence of a new [+pejorative] thematic grapheme in colloquial writing of Israeli Hebrew.

Finally, some respellings are more personal than others. For instance, the fact that intentional spelling variations such as *סמולן* <smvln> 'leftist' are often accompanied by numerous ignorance-based spelling variations, one of the social media attested responses, not very frequent though, is the intentional derogatory would-be imitative respelling *אנאלפבט* <ʾn?lpbt> "eliddiret" as an eye-dialect spelling for orthographic *אנאלפבית* <ʾn?lpbyt> 'illiterate'.

### 4. Anti-*Plene* Graphemic Conservatism

Either pointing or *plene* spelling may help readers complete phonological information unavailable in unpointed "defective" spelling (Weinberg, 1985). Before the *plene* accommodations were sanctioned (using additional *yod* *י* <y> and *vav* *ו* <v>), unpointed Hebrew was overloaded with the zero grapheme and reading it required intense cognitive labor. Yet, the introduction of those "helping letters" was felt by some readers to be "lowering the standard for the lazy, slow, and ignorant, instead of just teaching them how to read and write correctly". Reacting by psychological or cultural inertia (Aronoff, 1994) to the *plene* accommodations, some spellers would rather avoid adding *yod* *י* <y> and *vav* *ו* <v> in a few highly frequent lexical items.

One such word is *מאוד* <m?vd> /meod/ 'very', whose highly frequent reactionary conservative variant is *מאד* <m?d>. Another example is
the word אמא <ʔmʔ> /íma/ 'mom', whose recently-introduced yod (אימא <ʔymʔ>) breaks the visual-word habits of many language users. While unorthographic vav-less מעד <mʔd> is typically old school, unorthographic yod-less אמא <ʔmʔ> is much more widespread (Cohen-Gross and Ilani, 2006–2007). The case of the word /mila/ is more complex, since its pointed spellings vary between different meanings: מלה <mlh> 'word' and מילח <mylh> 'circumcision'. When plene orthography was first sanctioned in 1968, it was accepted that מלה <mlh> /mila/ 'word' be left unchanged in order to avoid homography with 'circumcision'. A few decades later, in 1994, the Academy of the Hebrew Language decided to adopt the plene spelling even for 'word', which assumes this semantic context would allow distinguishing both meanings in spite of their homographic spelling, whence מילה <mylh> /mila/ for both 'word' and 'circumcision'. Conservative spellers, however, maintain the spelling מלה <mlh> for 'word'. They include the liberal Haaretz daily newspaper, whose editor titled Or's (2004) critical article on prescriptive rigidity "Why <mlh> should be <mylh> from now on." In the conflict between Academy orthographic decisions and spelling traditions maintained by the intellectual elite, Tzivoni represents the prescriptive standpoint: "The Academy has set forth clear rules, but the influencing instances—particularly book editors and newspapers—refuse to obey them and make their own rules" (2011, p. 22). Without taking a stand here, it is worth noticing that reluctance from reform does not equal making up one's own rules—it rather constitutes maintaining a handed down spelling tradition against what conservatives view as unnecessarily made up spelling horrors.

Other non-*plene* spellings consist of *yod*-less /i/ in open syllables which affect particular morphological categories, two of the most salient being

- the future tense and infinitive of *nif'al* verb template like להכנס <lhkns> /le(h)ikanes/ 'enter (inf.)' instead of ordinary but more recently standardized plene להכנס <lhykns>; and

- the past tense of *pi'el*, e.g., למדו <lmdv> /limdu/ 'taught (past, 3pl)' instead of ordinary but more recently standardized plene לימדו <lymdv>.

The first is quite pervasive among college-degree holders since even *yod*-less spelling is sufficiently transparent. The second category, on the other hand, is much more opaque since in the absence of *yod* it graphemically coalesces with another morphological category (*qal* stem); it is therefore much rarer, and generally characterizes spellers who graduated from high school by the mid-1970s, when active pointing was taken out of the baccalaureate curriculum.

A more widespread non-*plene* spelling consists of avoiding the orthographic double-yod "<yy>"—which many proficient spellers would consider nonce spelling—corresponding to the consonantal /y/ in ultra-frequent words whose single-yod spelling is not subject to opacity in
reading. One such word is *הייתה* <hyyth> /hayta/ ('she') was', whose
general spelling is *היתה* <hyth>. Tzivoni comments from a prescriptive
point of view: "A few respectable book publishers refuse spelling *הייתה*
<hyyth> and use *היתה* <hyth>. Their resistance to *הייתה* <hyyth> is aston-
ishing and incomprehensible" (2011, 105, n. 1). Another case of double-
yod public intolerance is the final /ay/ spelling, whereby the general pub-
lic keeps spelling *עלוי* <וֹל> for orthographic *עלוי* <וֹלֹי> /alay/ 'on/about
me', *מחי* <mty> for orthographic *מtyy> /matay/ 'when', *דוי* <dy>
for *דיי* <dyy> /day/ 'enough'. The last anti-*plene* frequent spelling on
this list is *הכול* <hkvl> /(h)akol/ 'everything', whose general spelling is
*הכל* <hkl>. The lexical items presented in this paragraph are unortho-
graphically spelled not-*plene* by the general public, including by major
publishers, with the exception of ardent adherents to the Academy of
the Hebrew Language.

5. Proper Names: General Anti-*plene* Conservatism

The relatively long time-span of composition of the Hebrew biblical text
is responsible for several chronological differences in applying the use of
*matres lectionis* into its variable spelling in such way that later texts within
the biblical canon are spelled more *plene* than earlier ones (Andersen and
Forbes, 1986). While variable spelling, including *plene*, affects the gen-
eral lexicon, the category of proper names is somewhat more conserv-
ative than others in that it tends to remain relatively "defective". This
means that adding a *vav* ו <v> corresponding to a back vowel or a *yod*
 י <y> corresponding to a front vowel was much less current in some
proper names.

Modern Hebrew orthography tends to adopt these spellings by main-
taining their traditional biblical spelling without adapting it to the
general rules of modern *plene* orthography. Thus, a few traditional
proper names, widespread among Modern Hebrew speakers, display
no *vav* ו <v> corresponding to /o/: *יעקב <yִqb> /yaakov/ 'Jacob',
<msḥ> /məfe/ 'Moses', *שלמה* <šlmh> /ʃlomo/ 'Solomon'; and the name
<avd> /David/ 'David' displays no *yod* י <y> corresponding to a the
/i/, although some Israelis who go by that name take the somewhat
avant-garde liberty of spelling it using an additional *yod* י <y> as in only
three occurrences in Classical Biblical Hebrew (ibid., pp. 4-5), namely
<dyvd>, e.g., writer David Grossman.

The noun pattern *QóTeL* underlies common nouns whose pointed
vs. *plene* orthographies diverge on an additional ו <v>, e.g., <בqr>
/bóker/ 'morning' vs. <bvqr>. Some of these nouns are also used as
proper names, whence room for variation concerning the *vav* ו <v> in
unpointed yet willingly defective spelling (see §3.2 supra). Thus, while
the noun *זֹהִר* <zhr> /zó(h)ar/ 'glamour' is spelled *plene* זוהר <zvhr>, peo-
ple who go by that name (mostly first, seldom last) either spell it *plene* or insist on *zhr*. Other proper names displaying this feature: נגה <ngh> /nóga/, נעם <nֶסֶמ> /nóam/, רתם <rtm> /rótem/, ארן <?rn> /óren/, נעה <nֶסֶה> /nóa/, שהם <šhm> /šó(h)am/, with divergent tendencies in biblical names preferring the *vav*-less spelling vs. modern names showing preference for the *plene* spelling. Those who use the *vav*-less variant sometimes comment meta-graphemically “this is the *correct* spelling” and would often correct correspondents who would dare add the conventional *vav*. Parents often take the warrior’s stand, as the mother of a 12-year old boy called *אבינעם* <abynšm> /avinóam/, who commented in an interview (October 2017): “How can anyone with minimal self-respect spell it with a *vav*?” Others opt for the *vav* variant: “It’s just easier to read. And those who insist on the *vav*-less spelling are a bit stuffy” (Landman, 2014, p. 140).

Similar variation with respect to *vav* in proper names may be found in proper names of the noun patterns *QoTla* and *QoTLat*, whose *plene* spelling adds a *vav* which is absent in the pointed spelling, e.g., <šmrt> /šomrat/, <dbrt> /dovrat/, עפֹה <šfrh> /ofra/. The case of אסנת <?snt> vs. אוסת <?vsnt> for /osnat/ is more complex since one of the phonemic variants is /asnat/. Here too, biblical origins may encourage preference for the *vav*-less variants, and the same meta-graphemic discourse applies for these morphological categories as well.

## 6. Eye-Dialect Respellings

The term ‘eye-dialect’ refers to pronunciation-oriented non-orthographic respelling, whether the pronunciation at hand is socially-unmarked, <wimmin> for <women>, or, in an extended sense of the term, socially-marked, e.g., <bo’l> for <bottle>. Eye-dialect in Hebrew is used in direct speech represented in fiction or on social media and texting. In fiction it may either characterize pronunciation as ethnic or foreign, i.e., socially-marked pronunciation, or it may indicate fast / colloquial speech, which is then unmarked (Ben-Shahar, 1995). While eye-dialect in fiction is generally anecdotal, although some formation patterns are discernable, on social media and in texting it usually conveys socially-unmarked colloquial speech, thus representing *anti-spelling* (analogous to *anti-language* in general sociolinguistics). Among the highly-frequent eye-dialect items is the term *בִּית ספר* <byt spr> /bet séfer/ ‘school’ commonly respelled <btspr> “skool”. Taken a step farther, this alternative teasing respelling, originally conceived in teenagers’ blogs and short text messages, later served for branding as [+young] a new (2002) establishment:

“Habetzefer” was established by the Israeli Advertising Association which unites 50 advertising agencies in Israel. “Habetzefer”’s shares holders, are 40
leading advertising agencies of the country. Above all, this ensures that the "Habetzefer" curriculum is on par with the strict requirements of the advertising industry in order for our graduates to fit in the industry successfully. (www.habetzefer.co.il/english)

It remains to be seen whether the adoption of SMSpellings for branding products as [+young] is merely anecdotal or liable to become more productive.

## 7. Spelling Subsystem: Graphemic Marking of Lexical Foreignisms

One of the most salient features of Yiddish orthography is the graphemic dichotomy between European and Semitic lexical components, somewhat comparable to the "Native and foreign" graphemic distinction within Carney's (1994, 96ff) *Spelling Subsystems*. While the spelling of the Hebrew-Aramaic (hence 'patrimonial') lexical component of Yiddish follows classical Jewish sources, thus expressing loyalty to Jewish cultural heritage, as in the spelling systems of other Jewish languages, the spelling of the European component, mostly Germanic and Slavic, is much more phonemic, i.e., ideologically-neutral. Thus, on the verge of linguistic conversion to Modern Hebrew, after a few minor hesitations between contradictory tendencies, this graphemic dichotomy ended up remaining in Modern Hebrew with minor modifications, thus maintaining the traditional opposition between cultural continuity with classical sources vs. practical spelling of words bearing no cultural attachment (Neuman, 2013). Modern Hebrew phoneme-to-grapheme correspondences thus vary according to the feature [+foreign], and this dichotomy has led to two parallel graphemic sub-systems:

<table><thead><tr><th>Phoneme</th><th>Hebrew autochthonous</th><th>Foreign</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>/a/</td><td>Final position: א &lt;¿&gt;, or ה<br/>&lt;h&gt;, or י &lt;ש&gt;<br/>Medial position: zero &lt;o&gt;</td><td>ה &lt;h&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>/i/</td><td>Closed unstressed syllable:<br/>zero &lt;o&gt;. Elsewhere: י &lt;y&gt;</td><td>א &lt;¿&gt; &lt;o&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>/ay/</td><td>י &lt;y&gt; &quot;yy&quot;</td><td>&quot;yy</td></tr><tr><td>/v/</td><td>rarely ו &lt;v&gt;, frequently ב &lt;b&gt;</td><td>ב &lt;vv&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>/s/</td><td>rarely ש &lt;š&gt;, frequently ש &lt;s&gt;</td><td>ש &lt;s&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>/χ/</td><td>ח &lt;h&gt; כ &lt;k&gt;</td><td>כ &lt;k&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>/k/</td><td>כ &lt;k&gt; פ &lt;q&gt;</td><td>פ &lt;q&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>/t/</td><td>rarely ט &lt;ṭ&gt; frequently ת &lt;t&gt;</td><td>&lt;t&gt; → ט &lt;ṭ&gt; &lt;th&gt; → ת &lt;t&gt;</td></tr></tbody></table>

All in all, the spelling of foreign words is less complex, and learners of Hebrew may figure them out more easily than the orthography of patri-
monial vocabulary. To illustrate the major categories of the dichotomy, here are a few examples, one for each. Concerning the notation of /i/, whereas the /i/ in מפקדה <mpqdh> /mifkada/ 'headquarters' takes no yod י <y> since its syllable is closed and unstressed, the /i/ of היפנוזה <hypnvzh> /hipnóza/ 'hypnosis' takes the yod י <y> since in spelling foreign words, the type of syllable is irrelevant; unsanctioned yet common spelling exceptions display yod י <y> in closed unstressed syllables only where homography is liable to cause ambiguity, e.g., מנהל <mnhl> /mena(h)el/ 'director' vs. מינהל <mynhl> /min(h)al/ 'office'. With respect to the sequence /ay/, in autochthonous לילה <lylh> /láyla/ 'night' it takes a single yod י <y>, which could technically be interpreted as the vowel /i/ or /e/, while the same diphthong in the foreign term סיידר <syydr> /sáyder/ 'cider' takes a double-yod יי <yy>, which is less ambiguous; less proficient spellers tend to apply the foreign graphemic rule also to Hebrew words, e.g., ליילה <lyylh> instead of לילה <lylh>. Similarly, while the /v/ in autochthonous הבנה <hvnh> /havana/ 'understanding, comprehension' corresponds to bet ב <b>, but could technically be spelled with a double-vav ו ו <vv>, the Cuban capital cityHAVANA does take a double-vav ו ו <vv>: הוואנה <hvv?nh>, leaving no room for hesitation in reading. Finally, the alveolar stop /t/ in the word /tik/ is either spelled as autochthonous תיק <tyq> 'bag' or as foreign תיק <tyq> 'tick', and this spelling distinction joins a morphophonemic distinction in the plural tikím 'bags' vs. tíkim 'ticks'. Spelling autochthonous words is more complex than spelling foreignisms, and being able to coherently apply this dichotomy is part of spelling proficiency.

This dichotomy clearly carries ideological values. Patrimonial lexicon in Yiddish constitutes a minority within the entire vocabulary, so spelling it as in classical texts carries the value of respect towards Jewish cultural heritage. Conversely to Yiddish, Modern Hebrew vocabulary is more than 90% autochthonous (Schwarzwald (Rodrigue), 1998), so spelling foreign words differently puts them in a visible graphemic quarantine (not without calling to attention the special [Pharaonic] Egyptian graphemics for non-Egyptian words, more phonetic than for autochthonous words). When added to the already existing morphophonemic quarantine, and given the ideological anti-foreign inclination of the linguistic pillar in Zionism, as in several other national movements in 19th and 20th centuries, namely the language-shift to Hebrew, it becomes clear that their identification as external to the autochthonous system makes it easier to gradually replace them (Masson, 1986). For example, both morphophonemic foreignness of /táksi/ 'taxi' and the graphemic relative foreignness of its spelling טקסי <tqsy>, the tet ט <t> in particular, have allowed its maintenance in a stable structural segregation until the time came for its gradual yet successful replacement by the Hebrew term מונית <mvnyt> /monit/ (Neuman, 2013).
## 8. Arabic Loanwords: Between Foreignisms and Semitisms

Judeo-Arabic established a special tradition of transcribing Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet, which, though unstable with respect to the notation of several sounds, contributed its own share to Modern Hebrew graphemics. What is relevant for the present synopsis of Modern Hebrew spelling variation is the distinction, using Hebrew letters, between Arabic emphatic phonemes /t/ and /q/ and non-emphatic counterparts /t/ and /k/. Based on this distinction, the Hebrew notation of Judeo-Arabic phonemes follows this rule (Hary, 1996):

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>Phoneme</th><th>Arabic script</th><th>Hebrew script</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">Alveolar</td><td>[-emphatic]</td><td>/t/</td><td>ת</td><td>tav ת &lt;t&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>[+emphatic]</td><td>/t/</td><td>ط</td><td>tet ט &lt;t&gt;</td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2">Velar</td><td>[-emphatic]</td><td>/k/</td><td>ك</td><td>kaf כ &lt;k&gt;</td></tr><tr><td>[+emphatic]</td><td>/q/</td><td>ق</td><td>qof ق &lt;q&gt;</td></tr></tbody></table>

Comparing the Judeo-Arabic graphemic treatment of /t/ and /k/ according to this chart with their treatment in the last two lines in the previous chart (lexical foreignisms) suggests a possible graphemic conflict if, while being foreign in Hebrew, Arabic loanwords in Hebrew follow the Judeo-Arabic spelling tradition. Indeed, whereas Judeo-Arabic [-emphatic] /t/ and /k/ take *tav* ת <t> and *kaf* כ <k>, as foreign words in Modern Hebrew they would take *tet* ט <t> and *qof* ק <q>. The choice of their spelling in Modern Hebrew is partly conditioned by the feature [+learned] of the borrowing process (Neuman, 2015): words introduced into Hebrew via or accompanied by literacy, mostly by scholars or journalists, usually follow the customary Judeo-Arabic tradition, e.g., *איניתפאדה* *Intifada* (an Arabic word meaning 'tremor', usually rendered by 'uprising') with a *tav* ת <t>, whereas popular loans initially display more fluctuation in spelling, though they quite often become normalized though scholarly intervention and end up acquiring an orthography that follows the Judeo-Arabic tradition. Thus, Arabic loanwords in Hebrew whose spelling was arranged by learned language users are spelled in Hebrew according to the Judeo-Arabic tradition. For example, the 19th century Palestinian Yiddish lexical Arabism /sábre/ 'cactus fig' (Kosover, 1966, p. 157) was respelled into Modern Hebrew *צבר* <tsbr>, whence subsequent graphophonemic rephonemization into /tsabar/ (Neuman, 2009, pp. 690–692).

In turn, the fact that European loanwords obey relatively strict graphemic rules while Arabic loanwords are much less subject to such restrictions may indicate that, on the ideological level, given that Zionism exhibits a combination of rejecting old Europe and yearning for a somewhat imagined “new East,” Arabic loanwords might appear less foreign in Hebrew than the European loanwords. The unequal graphemic
treatment of European vs. Arabic loanwords is thus carrying a compo-
nent of identitary ideological discourse.

References

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Aronoff, M. (1994). "Spelling as Culture." In: *Writing Systems and Cognition: Perspectives from Psychology, Physiology, Linguistics, and Semiotics*. Ed. by I. Watt. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishing, pp. 67–86.

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Cohen-Gross, D., [כהן-גרוס, דליה]. and N. Ilani (2006-2007). "מילויי? [נוגה אילני] מהדסה להדס, מאליעזר לאלעזר - מאפיינים." [לנדמן, שלומית]. [Non-vocalized Orthography in Israeli books - planned or unplanned?] In: *חלקת לשון* [Smooth Tongue] 37-38, pp. 33-47.

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<figure><img src="image_191.png" /></figure>
# Emojis Are Everywhere

## How Emojis Conquer New Contexts

Christa Dürscheid

*Abstract.* This article first presents facts and figures about emoji use, which, as is pointed out, is by no means restricted to private everyday communication (Section 1). Next, two studies are discussed, shedding light on the following questions: on the one hand, whether emojis are indeed preferred by younger people and, on the other, which impression the use of specific emojis with positive or negative connotations leaves with the addressee of text messages (Section 2). The heart of this essay follows in Section 3—it focuses on emoji use during the COVID-19 crisis (which, at the time of writing, is still ongoing). Here, observations concerning new forms of emoji use on Facebook and in types of video chat (such as Zoom and Skype) are collected. Among these, two are discussed in more detail: firstly, the possibility to react to Facebook posts with a hugging face, which is supposed to help users take a symbolical stance “against loneliness.” Secondly, the fact that in video chats, emojis can now be sent as so-called real time reactions. This way, it is possible, for example, to send a thumbs down sign emoji while another person is speaking. In Section 4, an outlook is given, raising the question of how emoji use can be described at a linguistic level now that, given this new development in video chats, emojis are used also in oral communication and thereby cease to be mere complements to or substitutes for writing.

## 1. A Story of Success

Emojis are everywhere—especially whenever people exchange information with acquaintances, friends, or family via messenger services (such

This essay is an extended and modified version of the German-language paper (Dürscheid, 2020). The present English version was written during my fellowship at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum/Germany. This footnote also gives me the opportunity to thank Dimitrios Meletis and Cristina Stanley for their thorough proofreading.

Christa Dürscheid

<figure><img src="image_192.png" /></figure>

0000-0001-9141-7562

Department of German Studies, University of Zurich
Schönberggasse 9, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland

duerscheid@ds.uzh.ch

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*

Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 4.
Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 501–512. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-duer

ISBN: 978-2-9570549-6-1, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-8-5
as WhatsApp), post pictures of their restaurant visits on Instagram, or
send holiday greetings via Facebook. Furthermore, emojis are not only
used in private communication (as one may assume given these exam-
ples) but can also be found in business communications and in the con-
text of mass media: for instance, companies embellish their newsletters
with emojis; advertising agencies rely on emojis in the design of their
advertisements and billboards; T-shirts, posters, games, books as well
as films are marketed with emojis, and even police stations use them
to render their Facebook posts more informal and thus (perhaps) more
likeable (cf. Fig. 1).

<figure><img src="image_193.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 1. Emojis in Facebook</figcaption></figure>

As research on the use of emojis has gained pace, there is an abun-
dance of literature on the topic, which cannot be treated extensively
within the scope of this short essay (but see Seargeant, 2019, who deals
with the historical, political, social, and linguistic context of emoji use).
Two points should nevertheless be mentioned:

Firstly, the word *emoji* comes from Japanese. It is a combination of e
'image' and moji 'character'.<fnref n="1" /> The (coincidental) phonetic similarity with
the word emoticon does not reveal anything about how emojis are used.
This is evident from the example in Fig. 1, in which none of the three
emojis express emotions: two depict vehicles while the third one is the
"Face-with-Head-Bandage-Emoji".

Secondly, emojis are not only popular in private and more and more
official contexts but are also a recurring subject in public discourse (cf.
Fig. 2). For example, newspaper articles often raise the question of
whether writing with emojis could have long-term effects on the use
of language in general and discuss the consequences that could poten-
tially ensue if written communication were to be based increasingly on
images (e.g., photos, stickers, GIFs, emojis).

<footnote n="1">1. In Japan, the history of emojis reaches back to the last century. Shigetaka Kurita is regarded as their inventor. In the late 1990s, he designed—for the largest mobile phone provider in Japan at that time—small black and white graphics that were used to complement text.</footnote>
Interestingly, these articles often focus on young people. Could they lose the ability to express themselves correctly in writing because of the heavy use of emojis in the messages they compose? Another question that is repeatedly debated relates to whether emojis could form the basis of a new universal language. From a linguistic standpoint, this question is usually negated, as it is argued that emojis can supplement writing but not substitute it. The crux of this claim is that there exists no fixed relation between emojis and what they represent (see Dürscheid and Meletis, 2019, pp. 172–176 for an in-depth discussion of this topic), making it infeasible to represent complex sentence structures using only emojis.<fnref n="2" /> In this regard, we agree with Philip Seargeant’s assessment: “Emoji may be a lot more intuitive than alphabetic writing systems, which you have almost no chance of interpreting if you can’t read them. But they’re still semiotically fairly complicated. And their meaning often isn’t that transparent” (Seargeant, 2019, p. 20).<fnref n="3" />

Since emojis originated in Japan, it is unsurprising that the original meanings of many emojis reflect Japanese culture and language use. Take, for example, the poop emoji 😲, which is frequently added in Japanese text messages to wish someone good luck. By comparison, in western countries, this emoji is used in negative contexts or when writers comment critically on someone else’s statements.<fnref n="4" /> Scrolling through the long list of emojis on mobile phones, one instantly becomes aware of how many different emojis are currently available for use. Among them are emojis that represent the expression of certain feelings (e.g., laughing or sad face) but also emojis that stand for people of different professions, various types of food, sports activities, animals, vehicles, flags, and also symbolic signs (such as plus and minus, religious symbols, and the heart emoji, which is available in different colours).

Inserting these small colourful images into texts by means of few clicks is possible only because they are included in Unicode, the international character set that is the basis for all digital writing today (see https://home.unicode.org/). Of course, it had already previously been possible for writers to express what they mean by using additional graphic means: In the 1990s (and to some degree today still), people de-

<footnote n="2">2. Just consider ‘writing’ the following sentence using only emojis: *I would have liked to come yesterday, if I had the time.* Neither the grammatical information in this sentence (e.g., tense, mode) nor the logical connection between the two parts of the sentence can be expressed with emojis.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">3. Note that Ph. Seargeant uses *emoji* as the plural of *emoj*. Indeed, in Japanese, the plural does not change, while in English, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, emoji and emojis both are acceptable plurals. We prefer *emojis* as the plural form in this essay.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">4. More information about the meaning of emojis can be found at https://emojipedia.org/ (26/8/2020). It was Jeremy Burge who launched this website in 2013; he also introduced the “World Emoji Day,” which takes place each year on July 17th.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_194.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 2. Emojis in public discourse</figcaption></figure>

signed their emails and text messages with smileys in ASCII code such as, for instance, :-). Notably, when the first emojis were integrated into Unicode in 2010, many writers changed their habits und started using emojis instead of ASCII signs.

Currently, Unicode contains more than 3,000 emojis, with new ones being added on a yearly basis by the Unicode consortium, which is responsible for the admission. Given the multitude of proposals, it is obviously impossible for the consortium to approve every application for inclusion of an emoji. The approval process is guided by several criteria. For instance, a proposal for an emoji that is intended to promote a specific product (e.g., a brand of beverage) will not be successful. By contrast, if the applicants manage to provide evidence that a proposed emoji is of socio-political relevance, it has a far better chance of being accepted. It was, in fact, this criterion that led to the current situation in which many emojis (and variants of emojis) in Unicode represent people of different skin colours and diverse relationship constellations.
## 2. Adolescents, WhatsApp, and Emojis

According to the 2018 *PEW* study, people in the US aged 18-49 years have reached a near saturation level of 97% in their adoption of the internet.<fnref n="5" /> Interestingly, the number of people who have access to the internet only via their smartphones (instead of through traditional broadband services at home) has increased from 12% in 2016 to 20% in 2018. This suggests a noteworthy development towards “smartphone-only” internet users.

It is, of course, important to consider the purposes for which these people use the internet on their mobile phones, as this affects the question of whether or not they use emojis. For example, if someone has written a scientific essay and wishes to publish it on the internet or sends a business letter by email, he or she will probably not use emojis. This stands in stark contrast to messages sent via WhatsApp or posted on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, contexts in which it might even—to put it bluntly—raise eyebrows if no emojis are used at all. Assumedly, these applications enjoy particular popularity among young people. Therefore, let us briefly look at a series of German surveys, the so-called *JIM* studies (*Jugend, Information, Medien*), in which young people are regularly asked about their use of various media.

The most recent *JIM* study from 2019 shows that 93% of the 12- to 19-year-olds (n = 1,200) communicate via WhatsApp several times a week.<fnref n="6" /> The survey also found that WhatsApp is the most popular internet application, followed by Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook (in this order). This, notably, does not necessarily mean that adolescents use emojis more frequently than members of other age groups. In fact, there exists a study that makes the case for the opposite—if only on the basis of a very small sample (n = 120); in this study, the authors provide evidence that people above the age of 35 use more emojis than younger people (see Tschernig and Hertzberg, 2015). In the conclusion of their paper, they also address the question that is discussed so often both in public discourses as well as in research: What purpose do emojis serve in text messages? Since a growing number of studies deal with this matter (see, for example, Beißwenger and Pappert, 2019; Dürscheid and Frick, 2016; Herring and Dainas, 2017), only three aspects of this question shall be addressed in the following:

<footnote n="5">5. The *PEW* (Pew Research Center) presents itself as “a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world”. It conducts “public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research” in order to provide information for current discourses. For more information, see https://www.pewresearch.org (26/8/2020).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">6. Cf. https://www.mpf.s.de/studien/jim-studie/2019/ (26/8/2020).</footnote>
Firstly, as has been argued above, emojis can be used to make texts "more informal and likeable". To put it differently, they can assume an indexical function, meaning emojis potentially ascribe certain characteristics to a text (and thus to the producer of the text). This is underlined in an online survey (n = 385) that is part of a psychological study conducted by Wera Aretz. The survey's results lead to the following conclusion: "The author of a text using positively connotated emojis [e.g., 😂, CD] is perceived significantly warmer and more likeable, an author using no emojis is perceived more assertive, and an author using negatively connotated emojis [e.g., 😂, CD] as irritated and angry" (Aretz, 2019, p. 37).

Secondly, emojis can also be used for an additional illustration of what is already stated explicitly in the text. This is the case, for example, when emojis such as 😂, 👄 and 👄 are added to utterances such as *We are really excited for summer*.

Thirdly, emojis can be used to substitute parts of words, entire words, or noun phrases (see I'm on my 🧑, I'll take the night 👄). Important questions in this respect are whether writers do this to reduce typing effort or (just) see it as a kind of grapho-stylistic play. In any case, this type of use remains relatively rare. This is evident from the corpus studies of a Swiss research project (cf. https://www.whatsup-switzerland.ch) that is based on an extensive data collection of approximately 750,000 WhatsApp messages.

### 3. Emojis During the COVID-19 Crisis

Given that the pandemic has such a deep impact on our lives, it is unsurprising that it also affects the way emojis are used. Strikingly, as a result, a specific emoji is currently used much more frequently than before: the “face with medical mask emoji” 😂.<fnref n="7" /> Interestingly, at the same time, the relative use of the positive smiley-face emoji has dropped. As stated on Emojipedia, “emoji showing more negative or ambiguous emotions, like anger or pleading, have been ticking up, suggesting people are more uneasy right now”.<fnref n="8" /> Thus, in an analysis of 68 million tweets from April 2020, the pleading face emoji ranked as the third most popular emoji (cf. Fig. 3). As shown in the table, from August 2018 to April 2020, the two emojis that top the ranking have remained the same, while there has been a change in third place.

<footnote n="7">7. Here and in the following, we refer to surveys conducted by Emojipedia and reported on their website. Cf. https://blog.emojipedia.org/spread-of-the-coronavirus-emoji (26/8/2020).</footnote>

<footnote n="8">8. Cf. https://blog.emojipedia.org/emoji-use-in-the-new-normal (26/8/2020).</footnote>
Top Ten Emojis used on Twitter

Source: Emojipedia analysis of 68 million tweets published May 2020.
https://blog.emojipedia.org/emoji-use-in-the-new-normal

<figure><img src="image_195.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 3. Emoji ranking https://blog.emojipedia.org/emoji-use-in-the-new-normal/ (4/9/2020)</figcaption></figure>

Note that for purposes of comparison, it would be interesting to learn
whether the pandemic also effects users' emoji preferences on Face-
book. On Emojipedia, no studies approaching this question are avail-
able. However, it is noteworthy that in the spring of 2020, Facebook
introduced a new emoji that performs a virtual hug. It can be selected
among other "online reactions" such as 👄 or ♡ (cf. Fig. 4). According
to Facebook, the hugging face emoji is supposed to symbolically take a
stance "against loneliness" (cf. Fig. 5).

<figure><img src="image_196.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 4. Online reactions on Facebook</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_197.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 5. The hugging face emoji https://www.facebook.com/lincolnccfh/posts/2596013993946489 (4/9/2020)</figcaption></figure>

As mentioned above, each year, a set of new emojis is integrated into Unicode. Due to the pandemic, the Unicode consortium has postponed the release of its next version, Unicode 14.0, for six months (see http://log.unicode.org/2020/04/unicode-140-delayed-for-6-months.html, (26/8/2020)). Specifically, Unicode 14.0 was originally planned to be released in March 2021, with new emojis being made available for the public in the fall of 2021. Given the circumstances surrounding COVID-19, this will now probably not happen until 2022.<fnref n="9" />

Nevertheless, the popularity of emojis will likely grow even more due to the Corona crisis. The reasons for this are obvious: On the one hand, if, in the future, personal encounters have to be kept to a minimum, people will resort to sending each other text messages even more often than before. This will increase the overall use of emojis (and perhaps more specifically of emojis that express emotions). On the other hand, people will more often talk to each other via telephone calls (as in the past) or will communicate via video conferences, which may lead to a decreasing use of emojis. However, video platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, or Google Meet also allow users to send text messages that may include emojis. Furthermore, during a call or video chat, users can select emojis to comment on something another person has said. Google Meet, Zoom, and Skype already provide several emojis that allow listeners to perform such so-called "real-time reactions" (cf. Fig. 6).

<footnote n="9">9. However, an interim solution for 2021 was announced on Emojipedia on July 24th, 2020: "With Unicode 14.0 delayed due to COVID-19, a minor emoji release known as Emoji 13.1 will fill the gap for phone users in 2021" (https://blog.emojipedia.org/there-will-be-new-emojis-in-2021-after-all, (29/8/2020)).</footnote>
Thus, for instance, it is possible to send a thumbs up sign emoji while another person is speaking.

As evident from this screenshot, Google Meet users are invited to make further emoji suggestions that may be implemented in upcom-ing releases of the software. A question that arises in this context is whether (and how often) video chat participants actually make use of this option. In the next step, it would also be interesting to assess how this additional level of communication affects the person who is speak-ing, especially because emojis that express negative feelings can be sent as well. This last scenario is illustrated in the next screenshot that is taken from a one-to-one Skype conversation (cf. Fig. 7). While one per-son was talking, the other sent a frowning face emoji that appeared and briefly took up the whole screen before it disappeared again. Notably, this back-channel behaviour potentially irritates the speaker, which in turn could lead to her/him reacting immediately and changing the way the way s/he continues his or her turn.

<figure><img src="image_198.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 6. Emojis in Google Meet</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_199.png" /><figcaption>FIGURE 7. Real-time reaction in Skype</figcaption></figure>

If more than two people are involved in the video chat, the emoji would not occupy the entire screen but (in Skype, for example) superimposes only the camera image of the person who sent it. Nevertheless, not only the person who is currently talking but all participants can see it.<fnref n="10" /> In a certain way, this kind of nonverbal reaction is comparable to noticing a listener’s facial expressions while speaking in an ‘offline’, i.e., face-to-face conversation. However, whereas in a video chat, all participants will see this reaction (provided they are paying attention to the screen at the time when it is sent), this is not necessarily the case in an offline setting. To phrase it differently: online, it is not so easy to ignore this kind of back-channel behaviour, while in face-to-face conversations, the speaker as well as the other participants may overlook such a negative reaction.

Examples like this contribute to the impression that emojis are now indeed everywhere: they not only appear in combination with text anymore but have also become a part of digital-oral conversations. Of course, one could argue that emojis can also be sent in the text chat that runs parallel to video (or only audio) conversations, and that this has been possible for a long time. Against this background, it is justified to ask how the described emoji reactions differ from what has been previously practiced. Arguably, in text chats, emojis do not push themselves into the conversation in the same way that a real-time emoji reaction

<footnote n="10">10. Note that in Google Meet, for instance, emojis are not statically superimposed on the camera image but fly across the whole screen. This ensures that in video chats involving multiple participants, the reaction can really be seen by everyone.</footnote>
does. Also, if the participants in a conversation have not opened the text chat window, they will not see the emojis at all. Besides, from a linguistic perspective, it is a fundamental difference whether emojis are used while reading and writing or while listening and talking. The latter constitutes a switch from the oral to the visual mode, while the former occurs entirely in the visual mode.

## 4. Outlook

"The revolution we're experiencing at the moment [...] is centred around digital communication, the internet and mobile technology" (Seargeant, 2019, p. 190). This statement is found at the end of Seargeant's book. We argue that from the perspective of the year 2020 (so far), we are currently not only in the midst of a digital-technological revolution but are also experiencing a non-digital development that affects our society in its very roots. The epidemiological situation we are facing has a massive impact on our daily lives—this also includes the way we use digital media. In the present essay, we mentioned only one example of this: Due to the Corona pandemic, video chat conversations supplemented by text chat have become omnipresent. As we have shown, this is accompanied by a new communication practice that some platforms offer: sending emojis as real-time reactions.

If this type of emoji use grows increasingly popular, it will no longer be sufficient to study emojis as a mere complement to or substitute for writing. In this case, linguists would have to address the question of which functions emojis serve in online oral communication and whether, possibly, the distinction between oral conversation (by default without emojis) and written conversation (often with emojis) must be reconsidered. Evidently, the current situation produces interesting new research questions—however, possibly ones we would prefer to leave behind as soon as we have reached the end of the Covis-19 crisis. Since if (or hopefully when) we finally return to offline meetings, the described back-channel behaviour will likely be discarded. Indeed, the image of someone holding up a sheet with an emoji on it to give a comment during an offline conversation certainly appears absurd. Or does it?

## References

Aretz, Wera (2019). "Zeige mir Deine Emojis und ich sage Dir, wie Du bist: Die Nutzung und Wirkung von Emojis in der privaten Kommunikation." In: *Journal of Business and Media Psychology* 10.1, pp. 37–42.
Beißwenger, Michael and Steffen Pappert (2019). "How to Be Polite with Emojis: a Pragmatic Analysis of Face Work Strategies in an Online Learning Environment." In: *European Journal of Applied Linguistics* 7.2, pp. 225-253.

Dürscheid, Christa (2020). "Emojis sind überall. Schreiben in digitalen Zeiten." In: *Medien in Krisenzeiten*. Vol. 93. tv diskurs 3, pp. 62-65. URL: https://tvdiskurs.de/data/hefte/ausgabe/93/duerscheid-emojis-tvd93.pdf.

Dürscheid, Christa and Karina Frick (2016). *Schreiben digital. Wie das Internet unsere Alltagskommunikation verändert*. Stuttgart: Kröner.

Dürscheid, Christa and Dimitrios Meletis (2019). "Emojis: A Grapholinguistic Approach." In: *Graphemics in the 21st Century*. Ed. by Yannis Haralambous. Vol. 1. Grapholinguistics and Its Applications. Brest: Fluxus Edition, pp. 167-183.

Herring, Susan C. and Ashley R. Dainas (2017). ""Nice picture comment!" Graphicons in Facebook Comment Threads." In: *Proceedings of the Fiftieth Hawai'i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-50)*. Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE. URL: https://ella.sice.indiana.edu/~herring/hicss.graphicons.pdf (visited on 10 September 2020).

Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest (2019). *Jugend, Information, Medien. Basisuntersuchung zum Medienumgang 12- bis 19-Jähriger*. Tech. rep. URL: https://www.mpfs.de/fileadmin/files/Studien/JIM/2019/JIM_2019.pdf (visited on 10 September 2020).

Seargeant, Philip (2019). *The Emoji Revolution: How Technology is Shaping the Future of Communication*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tschernig, Kristin and Katharina von Hertzberg (2015). "Altersgruppenspezifisches Nutzungsverhalten von Bildzeichen bei WhatsApp." URL: http://www.mediensprache.net/de/websprache/messaging/whatsappicons/index.asp (visited on 10 September 2020).
# A Case in Point: Communication With Unknown Intelligence/s

Tomi S. Melka · Robert M. Schoch

*Abstract.* This article discusses from a semiotic perspective one important variable—anthropocentrism—present in various proposed messages intended to communicate with off-world intelligences. Our review of different scenarios reveals embedded flaws to various degrees. This should not be a reason for desisting in the pursuit of SETI-style (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) passive “listening” or active “messaging” programs; however, in tandem with such SETI-style programs, a robust and efficient strategy for potential contact should be developed as well. Such a strategy will require adequate time for major structural improvements in both the semiotic and technological realms rather than attempted last-minute adjustments carried out, for instance, when a SETI-style program claims success and contact seems imminent.

The realization that humans often have great difficulties in interpreting their own cultural products and experiences (especially, the long-forgotten ones), as well as the communicative abilities of non-human residents on Earth, is deemed a critical aspect that must be overcome in order to undertake successful hypothetical communication with extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs). Furthermore, we believe it is pertinent to raise the issue of the modality that any particular ETIs might utilize or recognize as a communication system. Arguably, the widely held assumption (often unstated) that ETIs will recognize and respond positively to either visual or auditory communication (where auditory communication is often encoded in visual graphic forms, such as writing systems), in many cases coded in and transmitted via electromagnetic waves or some other medium, is simply a form of anthropocentrism at a fundamental level.

## 1. Introduction

Searching for knowledge and reaching new, unknown realms has stood for challenge, scientific adventure, and self-fulfillment in humankind's

Tomi S. Melka
Independent Researcher, Las Palmas de G.C., Spain
E-mail: tmelka@gmail.com

Robert M. Schoch
Institute for the Study of the Origins of Civilization (ISOC),
College of General Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
E-mail: schoch@bu.edu

Y. Haralambous (Ed.), *Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2020. Proceedings*
Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (ISSN: 2681-8566, e-ISSN: 2534-5192), Vol. 4.
Fluxus Editions, Brest, 2021, pp. 513–559. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-graf-melk
ISBN: 978-2-9570549-6-1, e-ISBN: 978-2-9570549-8-5
course. As long as the human condition persists, the inner drive of explo-
ration *beyond one more barrier* will continue and possibly grow (cf. Steven
J. Dick, in Gardner, 2007, p. 3). Unidentified human events (lost or
non-retrieved), non-human data-driven observations, and other scien-
tific phenomena, distant or very distant from our world, have been and
still are the focus of attention for scores of researchers. In this context,
the probable existence of ETIs and intended inter-communication rep-
resents a research area highly subject to philosophical, theological, and
epistemological factors. On the other hand, the present controversy sur-
rounding several aspects of this topic cannot eclipse its mid- or long-
term significance. The acronym *ETIs* (extra terrestrial intelligences)
conveys in what follows a general practical term,<fnref n="1" /> and without enter-
ing into fine semantic distinctions, it swaps occasionally with *alien/s*. It
needs to be clear, at this point, that the following text is not the after-
result of the UFO-craze or “watching countless film and television dra-
mas in which creatures from other worlds” (Shostak and Barnett, 2003,
p. 1) with oversize brains (or not) engage in massive local / global inva-
sions, fight in space, or show their bizarre manners, clothes, and gadgets.
Furthermore, the present authors do not mean to exercise in exotic and
cool topics, neither instill tediousness nor ridicule (see also D. G. Brin,
2006).

The idea for the essay emerged from research in symbolic and writ-
ing systems and semiotics in general (see Melka, 2008; 2010; 2013; 2017;
Melka and Místecký, 2020; Melka and Schoch, 2020; Zörnig and Melka,
2014). A number of obstacles, present during the process of interpre-
tation and deciphering of unknown verbal and/or non-verbal informa-
tion, certainly raise parallels for the far more complex and difficult task:
that of identifying and retrieving messages from non-terrestrial sources.
Take just one example, that of the classical script of Rapa Nui (Easter
Island)—*rongorongo*. Despite numerous efforts by past and present re-
searchers, the greatest part of its sign-sequences remains impregnable
(cf. Vakoch, 2014a, p. xxi), whether in semantic and/or phonetic terms.
Upon which, any resilient and open mind might ask: if modern humans
do not consistently capture and interpret cogently the information made
by an earlier human culture, how can they proceed with truly alien cul-
tures, products of very divergent developmental pathways, and bound
(very likely) to unrelated bio-chemical and/or cultural parameters? In
a similar vein, Arthur C. Clarke (in *Praise for Lost Languages*, Robinson,

<footnote n="1">1. For instance, in his Abstract, André Kukla (2001) elaborates the term according to three criteria, “[the] abbreviation ‘ETI’ [will]… stand for three related concepts: (1) the abstract idea of extraterrestrial intelligence, (2) individuals who are both extraterrestrial and intelligent (as in ‘There’s an ETI in the closet’), and (3) the hypothesis that there are ETIs”. For nuanced definitions and conceptions of extraterrestrial intelligence, see Dunér (2017, pp. 435–437).</footnote>
2002, dust jacket; Robinson, 2017, p. 209) in commenting about human-made scripts that will probably never be deciphered, pointed out, "if we cannot always understand messages from our fellow humans, how successful will we be when we receive the first communication from Outer Space?"

Given the size and the depth of the subject, our focus here is directed toward a technical aspect of communication with the “unknown”: the ingrained human-based semiotics, its outcomes and constraints thereof. The viability of visual and aural codes primarily sent through electromagnetic conduits, and also through other conceivable channels (although to a lesser extent), is examined. In the context of grapholinguistics, we believe it is pertinent to raise the question of whether or not the ETIs we might encounter will necessarily utilize (or recognize) visual and/or auditory communication systems (most human visual graphic communication systems are based on, or encode, auditory communication systems). Whether sent by physical means (such as plaques on spacecraft), broadcast via electromagnetic waves, or conveyed by some other means, will such messages hit or miss the mark? Furthermore, auditory speech in a human sense consists of sequences of sounds over time, with writings and scripts typically “mimicking” such a temporal or linear-like sequence (not just in “straight lines,” but also sometimes forming spirals and other shapes). Will the ETIs also communicate using such temporal and linear sequences of “words” or “signs”? Our human inclination toward visual and auditory communication systems arranged in temporal or linear sequences, for the most part, can be viewed as one more instance of anthropocentrism (gestural communication is a form of visual communication), one that occurs at a fundamental level for us, but may not be shared by the ETIs. Even on our planet, non-human species may communicate primarily in other manners and via other modalities, such as by releasing various chemicals that are then detected by the recipients (that is, communication by odors and smells, which are also utilized by humans, but primarily at a more instinctual level, including the use of perfumes as “aphrodisiacs”), by taste, by touch, by body position and orientation (including kinesothetic aspects), and so forth. Be this as it may, given the state of affairs and understanding regarding human communication at this stage in the scholarly literature and the themes of the conference, in this article we necessarily focus on visual and auditory communication systems, even if transmitted through other channels. Of the visual *versus* auditory, some will argue that the visual (such as written sequences and engraved signs) have a much greater chance of surviving over long periods of time as compared to auditory messages, and therefore the visual messages are more likely to be intercepted by the ETIs.

The serious dilemma of whether humans should strictly listen or also transmit at this stage—known as *passive* vs. *active* SETI (Search for