Good morning, Interweb. Let's worldbuild. In order to create an interesting writing
system you need to: Pick a type of script, pick a writing medium, and pick a set of rules to govern that script. Before you start creating symbols, ask yourself:
how many sounds do you want represented per glyph? This will determine the type of writing system
your script will be. In an Abjad, only consonants get symbols. Vowels are inferred by the reader, not written. Alphabets contain a separate glyph for each consonant and vowel. Abugidas, contain a separate glyph for every consonant-vowel pairing. Vowels here are of secondary importance, and are usually marked in as diacritics. Syllabaries have entire syllables represented
by a single glyph, logographic systems contain a separate glyph
for every word or phrase, and ideographic systems contain symbols that represent entire concepts or ideas. Oftentimes ideographs are also pictograms like everyone's favourite modern day example: emojis. Now, featural systems are kinda weird, in that they encode phonetic information, not sounds. Like you have a couple of base glyphs associated with certain sounds. You systemically add a certain mark and everything becomes a plosive, say. Add another and those plosives get devoiced. That sorta thing. All you gotta do now is pick one of these systems. But, like, feel free to modify or combine things, or just come up with something totally different. It is 100% up to you. For context, writing systems on earth emerged in this order. Ideographs were a feature of proto-writing, and date back to as early as the 7th millenium BCE The first writing systems proper were logographic, and emerged in the early Bronze Age So, if you want to give your glyphs an evolutionary history, start with a picture and then simplify it over many, many iterations. Lastly, and probably most importantly, pick a type of script that suits your language's phonotactics. Logographic systems, work well for analytical languages like Mandarin – where words are not annexed to convey grammatical meaning. Abugidas and syllabaries suit languages with
very simple syllable structures, and Abjads, they work well for languages in which words are built upon consonantal roots How a culture writes greatly effects the look of that culture's script. Does you culture carve their glyphs into stone or wood? If so, think about the limitations those materials impose. Carved glyphs will tend to be angular, have very few, if any, curves, and may contain artefacts of the carving tools. Does your culture write on paper using calligraphic pens or ink quills? If so, expect flowing lines and a very natural
variation in stroke thickness. Bearing in mind that angle at which the pen is held will affect the look of the script. Regular pens or pencils on paper produce lines of uniform thickness and encourage fast writing, so expect a cursive hand to evolve. What happens to a cursive script when speed is the most important factor? What about the use of styli? Press a stylus into clay and the shape of
the individual elements – the graphemes that make up your glyph – will be limited to the shape of the tools available. Write with a stylus on foliage and expect to see a script that favours curves – angular gestures tear leaves. Brushes can produce a very flowing calligraphy with massive variation in stroke size. Maybe your glyphs are to be painted, hieroglyphics-style, allowing for the creation of elaborate pictures in full blown technicolor. Are the colors superficial or do they carry
meaning? Are there any limitations on the colors to
be used? Has your culture invented the printing press? If so, glyphs will become standardised. Fonts can get extremely elaborate because manual reproduction isn't a factor. Maybe your culutre has computerised everything. Fonts could incorporate animated gifs, videos, have opacity; be ultra-HD, extremely detailed, photoshopped logographs… the sky is the limit. Speaking of which, maybe your culture "writes" on a non permanent medium like in the sky or the on the earth. Flag semaphore, anyone!? Perhaps, for literary reasons, your glyphs should reflect the dominant traits of your culture: peaceful, warlike, evil, advanced,
funny, elegant, and so on. Regardless of medium, ensure that your glyphs each look distinct, yet related. Ambiguity is never a good thing. Also, think about scalability: can your glyphs be shrunk down and blown up large? Can they be read at a distance? If not, perhaps make them less detailed. Are you going to create upper- and lowercase forms? If so, why? Will you create a single glyph for every phoneme in your language? Or will some glyphs account for multiple sounds. Above all else, the name of the game here is iterate. Iterate, iterate and when you're sick of iterating...iterate
some more. Once you have a set of glyphs, think about
what rules govern them. On the macro level, what is the directionality
of block text in your script: top to bottom, bottom to top, left to right, right to left or even alternating? The latter being lines that alternate in direction, with the glyphs flipping to indicate the current reading direction – known as Boustrophedon,
aka as the ox plows. Do your glyphs only encode sound, or do they also encode extra features like stress, tone, loudness, tempo, intonation, word breaks, emotions, double meanings and so on? What are the rules of spelling in your language? Has spelling become standardised? What are the rules regarding capitalisation? Does your scripts require spaces? I mean, we don't speak… with… spaces, so why
write with spaces? Is context sufficient or is punctuation needed
to supply extra meaning? If so, what role will punctuation play? Do numbers get there own glyphs or are they
written out? Lastly, I want to make a case for a thing
called the acrophonic principle. That is, the idea that the name of each glyph should starts with the sound that glyph represents. Kinda like "B". Moreover, you can set up a situation whereby each glyph can represent two distinct sounds depending on its location within a syllable. This, for example, could represent "r" in
initial position but "l" in final position, say. Thus, using the acrophonic principle, this
glyph could be called "ral". Which I think is just a very neat system. Anyways, there you have it. How to come up with a writing system done! Pick a type of script, pick a medium, set some rules, then go forth and iterate… until you can iterate no more. So, inspired by the epicness of [an Artifexian viewer], link's in [description], and my recent trip to South Korea, I decided to create a writing system for Oa, and here it is! Awesome! Video done. See you all next time. Edgar out. Oh! You're still here. Right. Well, here's a picture of the human food hole. Nasal cavity, roof and floor of the mouth, lips, teeth, toungue, and glottis. All graphically abstract…
