It’s all squiggles to me
By: Bruno Maag
Tags: A11y, Accessibility, Typography

Writing and, by extension, reading are humanity’s greatest cultural achievement which happened approximately 5,000 to 5,500 years ago. From what we know today, it originated in ancient Egypt with the invention of hieroglyphics. Some believe Cuneiform, (the writing system of ancient Babylonia and Assyria), came first. But the earliest records date back “only” about 4,500 years. Either way, this article’s purpose is not to debate which came first but to explain the different concepts of writing systems.

Four basic types

When we speak of writing systems we mean the act of making marks, graphic symbols, on a surface using any kind of implement… even one’s finger. For the purpose of this article I will focus on visual writing systems but with an awareness that Braille is also a writing system, albeit requiring a tactile input to be read. I would not consider sign language a writing system but as a communication system — a different type of “language”.

Writing systems can broadly be categorised into four types: Alphabetic, Syllabic, Abjad and Ideographic. Of these, the first three represent the sounds of languages, and ideographs represent concepts. This is an important distinction as this has a bearing on the time it takes to learn how to read and write, and possibly on reading difficulties such as dyslexia.

Let’s look at the writing systems in a bit more detail:

Alphabetic

Latin, (left) with associated accents indicating sound modifications for a specific language. Contemporary Greek, (middle) has a small number of accents for sound modification, while classical Greek contains a larger set of diacritics to assist with intonation and pronunciation. Cyrillic (right) has a small number of accented characters.

In an alphabet, each character represents one or more sounds of a language. Some languages require the addition of diacritics, or accents to modify the sound behaviour. Letter combinations are also used to express certain sounds of a language that otherwise would require a new character or additional accent. English is a great example of ‘how not to do it’ where often different sounds use the same letter combinations, and vowels can be modified by the either preceding or following consonant, or another vowel even. This can cause difficulties for learner readers and people with reading impairments.

Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Georgian are alphabets.

Syllabic

The example shows Devanagari, one of the many syllabic writing systems. Each character denotes a consonant with an inherent vowel. The red glyph is a vowel modifier, and this example also shows a conjunct, in green, that is a combination of two or more base characters. Conjuncts may also have vowel modifiers. Indic writing systems in particular are quite complex.

Syllabic writing systems in general represent the consonant sounds of a language with an inherent vowel, and modifier marks indicate the changed vowel sound following the consonant. It is not uncommon to see several variations of the same basic character, depending on the number of vowels present in that language. Some syllabic writing systems may also change the consonant shape when preceded by a vowel that has a specific dependency within the sentence syntax.Most Asian writing systems are syllabic and tend to have varying degrees of linguistic and grammatical complexity. The aforementioned Cuneiform is largely a syllabic writing system.

Abjad

Arabic is a joining script, mainly made up of consonant base characters. The blue lines roughly indicate the demarcation of each character, with marks in red indicating short vowels. In Arabic there are three long vowels — alif, yeh and waw — written as distinct characters. There are also breathing and other marks instructing the reader as to the correct pronunciation.

These are in essence consonant-only writing systems and may have some basic distinct vowel characters. Vowel sounds are generally indicated with diacritic marks placed near the consonant that precedes the vowel. Vowel and other pronunciation marks are not commonly used in day-to-day writing, but instead to avoid word ambiguity. Classical and religious writing makes extensive use of diacritic marks as it is imperative that the words are read exactly as the author intended. Examples of modern abjad are Arabic and Hebrew.

Ideographic

The top row shows the ideographic characters of Chinese (on the left), Japanese Kanji (center) and Korean (right). The red character is a Japanese Hiragana glyph complementing Japanese writing; the Korean glyph is composed of individual alphabetic characters outlined in different colours.

Characters in this category of writing system, represent words or even entire expressions of a language. Each word requires a representation, and when new words enter the vocabulary, a new character has to be created. It is normal for a reader of an ideographic system to have to learn around 3,000 characters just for day-to-day communications. Ideographic systems are highly organised and consist of a core set of symbols that are combined to create new expressions. Newly created symbols must of course be learnt but a highly proficient reader may also be able to glean the meaning of the character simply by analysing its core elements. Examples of ideographic writing systems are Chinese and the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Korean is considered ideographic but contains alphabetic core elements that are combined into a single character to make the word or expression. Japanese is a mixture of alphabetic (Romani), syllabic (Kana) and ideographic (Kanji).

Our system is better than yours

The main advantage of learning to read and write sound-based systems over ideographic is that the learner has to memorise fewer characters. It takes a child of a European language approximately two years to gain reasonably confident and proficient literacy skills whereas a Chinese child may take up to six years. Once proficiency is attained the advantages of one system over another are gone. There is no better or worse way of writing; it is simply different and its ease depends on what we’re used to.

It’s also important to understand that a language can be written with any type of writing system. There are many examples of this occurring, even today: it is not uncommon that young Arab speakers use Latin letters to transliterate their language on mobile devices simply because it’s easier. In the 11th and 12th centuries Arabs occupied southern Spain, and Spanish would be written in Arabic. During the Soviet Union the Armenian and Georgian communities had to adopt the Cyrillic writing systems for their language. Turkish was written in Arabic until the 1930s when Ataturk changed it all to Latin. And until recently, Vietnamese used Chinese characters but today employs Latin.

The way we write is largely the result of humanity’s violent history and it continues to change. It’s the result of war, politics, religion and economy, and it’s entirely feasible that in decades or centuries to come we may write English in a different writing system, or even a new one. One thing is for certain: the way we write shapes our thinking.

At the movies

Science fiction and fantasy movies often depict writing systems from alien races or mythological peoples. What strikes me is that often these are alphabetically based systems and not surprisingly so. Western based producers and designers are immersed in alphabetical thinking and are unlikely to contemplate that there could be something else. Klingon is an alphabet, even though there is no reason why Klingons would use an alphabet considering their rather guttural language.

Elvish was devised by Tolkien for his Hobbit and Lord of the Rings stories. He took a holistic approach and created what could be considered an abjad system, consonant-only with vowel diacritics following the relevant consonant. Truly inspiring was the newly created writing system for ‘Arrival’. It is meta-level ideographic as it doesn’t only represent words or expressions but entire thought processes that transcend time and space, and capture emotions and facts all in one. But we are entering the realms of philosophy now…

On our wonderful planet

Many of us have a very limited knowledge of the existence of the myriad writing systems that are in use today. Around three dozen or so are used by more than 10 million people while others struggle for survival with only a handful of readers left. There are organisations and companies that actively work on preserving near extinct writing systems and to archive that particular piece of cultural heritage. There are also communities working to create new writing systems that better reflect their language and cultural heritage.

Mongolian is spoken by approx 5 Million people but the Mongolian writing system is used mainly for religious and classical literature purposes. Most Mongolian speakers use Cyrillic in their day to day writing. One of the main features of Mongolian is its vertical direction. (Lettering image is sourced from Wikimedia Commons)

What is clear from this wonderful kaleidoscope of letter shapes is that writing is very closely tied to culture and to an extent to liberty. Dark chapters in human history have seen time and again wiping out a people by simply prohibiting a people’s way of writing. The era of Stalin saw Armenian and Georgian culture suppressed by banning their respective writing systems and enforcing Cyrillic. After the fall, both cultures reclaimed and now fiercely protect their writing culture.

Companies can contribute to building respect for other cultures by ensuring that they consider writing systems as part of their communications with their target audiences. This will build emotional, functional and technical accessibility. It will also increase the commercial benefits for the company that actively engages with readers of letterforms other than our own.

Notes: the typefaces shown above are: Aktiv Grotesk for alphabetic, abjad and ideographic, and Bressay for syllabic. Both are available from Dalton Maag.