opération manta

manuscript

theology

manuscript

On this page:

A writing system I use to explore what I find interesting about manuscripts. For now, I’ve tried to make the system 1] a bit more phonetic in its spelling than standard English, and 2] fun to write in cursive!

It’s also an abjad, because abjads are cool (and potentially efficient, see spelling).

It is a work in progress.

There is a github repository associated with this project where I plan to put font files and the like.

consonants

29 English consonant sounds are represented. Rather than simply come up with 29 unique glyphs, we’ll devise a system to organize these sounds in way that makes writing them more manageable.

consonant sounds

1. Sounds are organized into three families based on the general area where they are pronounced in the mouth (see rows in the table below).

2. Within these families, sounds are organized into groups based on three factors of similarity (see columns in the table below):

  • Unvoiced and voiced variation on the same sound (e.g. t/d)
  • Related pronunciation (e.g. both t/d pair and θ/đ pair are pronounced with the tip of the tongue at the front of the mouth)
  • Reoccurrence of a sound within compounds (t/d contained in tʃ/dʒ)
Consonant sounds a. base letter b. related c. compound
unvoiced voiced unvoiced voiced unvoiced voiced
1. lips bilabial p b
m w cw gw
labiodental f v
2. ridge alveolar t d θ đ tʃ dʒ
s z ʃ ʒ
n
l
3. back palatal r y
velar k g ks gz
ŋ
guttural h ʔ

This way of organizing our consonants will determine how we write them. Instead of having 29 random glyphs, we’ll have :

  • three families of glyphs (lips consonants, ridge consonants, and back consonants)…
  • made up of twelve unique letters (the twelve rows)…
  • with a maximum of six variations of each letter (the six columns).

Let’s see how this plays out graphically.

writing consonants

Each consonant follows one of three shape patterns, and each shape pattern corresponds to one of the three pronunciation families on the consonant sounds chart above. In other words, a consonant letter’s general shape — specifically, if it has a stem and where the stem is located — indicates approximately where a letter is pronounced in the mouth.

I write 29 consonant sounds with only twelve letters, one letter for each row of the consonant sounds chart above. Diacritics are then used to distinguish sounds in the group (columns on the chart below).

Consonant
patterns 		a. base b. related c. compound
unvoiced voiced unvoiced voiced unvoiced voiced
1. lips ! ; , . ' : "
2. ridge ?
3. back ;

Example:

Here’s how the above patterns play out with the letter p:

  • p has a stem on the left side of the letter, meaning it is a sound pronounced at the lips. It represents the p sound.
  • If you take the letter p and add a voice mark on top of it, you get b. This represents the b sound (p + voice).

The 29 written consonant sounds follow the above patterns. One exception for practicality: it is not necessary to write the voiced diacritic for voiced consonants with no unvoiced counterpart (m, w, n, l, r, ŋ).

Here’s what that looks like:

Writing
consonants		 a. base letter b. related c. compound
unvoiced voiced unvoiced voiced unvoiced voiced
1. lips bilabial p (p) b (b)
m (m) w (w) q (kw) W (gw)
labiodental f (f) v (v)
2. ridge alveolar t (t) d (d) F (θ) V (đ) T (tʃ) D (dʒ)
s (s) z (z) j (ʃ) J (ʒ)
n (n)
l (l)
3. back palatal r (r) y (y)
velar k (k) g (g) x (ks) G (gz)
N (ŋ)
guttural h (h) H (ʔ)

That’s it for consonants.

vowels

Vowels are still evolving in how I write them. This flexibility doesn’t tend to impact the rest of the writing system, however, since vowels are represented as diacritics that freely float below the consonant that precedes them.

For now, I tend to be able to get away with writing only 15 vowel sounds, which, much like consonant sounds, are organized into families (see rows in chart below) so that we don’t have to write 15 unique glyphs.

Since vowel pronunciation is so heavily influenced by dialect, I have provided example words alongside of IPA. The latter is only accurate for my accent.

vowels short long diphthong other
a nap (æ) cape (eɪ) aha! (ɑ)
e pen (ɛ) peek (i)
i nib (ɪ) tide (aɪ)
o hot (ɑ) note (oʊ) loud (aʊ) raw (ɔ)
u mud (ʌ) muse (ju)
oo room (u) book (ʊ)

cursive manuscript

connecting letters

Writing this script in cursive is not as straightforward as typical English cursive with a latin alphabet because letters do not consistently attach at the writing line.

Instead, how a letter is written depends on two factors:

  • Whether the letter is at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
  • Whether the stroke of the pen approaches this letter from the top, middle, or bottom.

The table below summarizes how letters change shape and how they attach based on these two factors. Letters not shown on the chart (k, N, h) don’t change.

cursive beginning middle end
top middle bottom top middle bottom
p
m
f
t
s
n
l
r

Since cursive is partly a matter of ergonomics, partly a matter of esthetics, there is flexibility here. For example, I often find that I like to use the middle form of letters in the t family at the beginning of one-syllable words (see examples in next section).

connecting words

Words aren’t always written from left to right with spaces in between; they can succeed one another in other ways as well.

For example, the most obvious way to write the words “the pen” would be in the following way:

However, I would probably write it like this:

In addition to choosing the middle form of the letter t, I have also extended the tail of this letter in a way that causes the second word to “sit” on the first.

We could also write the words “this pen” like this:

We can briefly explain how words overlap like this in three points:

  • A word can sit on a horizontal stroke belonging to a previous word if that horizontal stroke is at the writing line.
  • The two words remain distinct in that aren’t connected with a continuous cursive stroke.
  • Word order remains discernible in that the first letter of the first word precedes the first letter of the second word.

As long as word order remains clear thanks to these constants, there’s room for quite a bit of flexibility.

spelling

vowels

An advantage to using diacritics for vowels is that you can omit them when they’re not strictly necessary without changing the overall look of a word. Vowels are, in fact, optional.

Now, unlike in semitic languages, we can’t omit vowel information entirely and expect English to remain intelligible. Still, a good number of vowels can in fact be left out.

To demonstrate, take the consonants below:

Without vowels, this spells out “W’TH ’M’J’S ’N’T T’P’L’J”, which is not very readable, apart perhaps from the first word, “with”.

First, we can use a tie (like a tie in music) to indicate when two consonants follow directly, with no vowel between them:

In reality, such a tie is unnecessary in this case because the letters Hnt (or even hnt) will always be the word “and” unless otherwise specified. Frequent words like this don’t need as much detail.

Without vowels, the second and fourth words are tougher. So we start by writing in any vowels that are in stressed syllables:

This gives us “WITH IM’J’S AND T’POL’J” (stressed vowels underlined). The second word is now clearly “images” even though two vowels are missing.

It turns out that the final word ends in a vowel, but this isn’t obvious given the way we’ve written it. It’s generally good to write final vowels. Since this word ends in a long-e sound, and because long-e endings are so frequent, they’ve developed their own easy ending: a lengthened letter tail and a long parallel line placed beneath it.

Even if we don’t write the final vowel, we should at the very least extend the tail on the final letter to indicate that a vowel of some kind is present.

The vertical mark placed under the p in the last word can be useful to specify which of several marked vowels is emphasized.

This gives us “WITH IMAGES AND T’POL’JEE”. The last word could be “typology” but it could also be “topology”. In the majority of cases, context makes choices like this obvious. Still, when an uncommon word appears for the first time in a text, it’s a good idea to write more vowels.

In the end, we might end up with something like this:

In this example, we’ve omitted two thirds of our vowels without sacrificing intelligibility. When this is developed as a reflex, writing becomes more efficient.

To summarize these rules of thumb:

  • Very common words (especially conjunctions and the like) barely need diacritics.
  • Ties can be used to link two consonants. Series of three consonants are linked with an upside-down tie (see sample text below).
  • Vowels should be placed under stressed syllables in words that aren’t immediately obvious without them.
  • Final vowels should be indicated with a tail.
  • When several vowels are provided in a word, the emphasized vowel can be marked.
  • Vowels and other markings can of course be discarded after the initial occurrence of a frequent word in a given body of text.

Ok, now we can see how it all comes together.

sample text

Transcription below.

Title: “Asterix in Corsica”

“For most people, Corsica is the homeland of an emperor who has left pages in history as indelible as those inspired by our old friend Julius Caesar. It is the country of vendettas, siestas, complicated political games, strong cheese, wild pigs, chestnuts, succulent blackbirds and spry old men watching the world go by…”

fonts

As much as I’d like to make one, currently there is no cursive font for this script. But there is a bare bones, rough-around-the-edges print font which I made for the purpose of documentation, and which can be downloaded from the github repository. This font only includes consonants.

The chart below summarizes how inputs are mapped:

reflection notes

I’d like to describe a simple writing habit that I learned over a couple of years as an exercise in grief.

Before learning to write like this, I had previously tinkered with both scattered pensées and highly structured journals. But in crisis, these fell by the wayside. I needed writing to patiently accompany me from chaos to meaning, rather than to succumb to chaos or attempt to impose meaning.

The notes that resulted from this walk are like a photo caracterized by vivid motion blur. It’s not only their contents that make up this picture, but especially their “shape”, their format and their collective structure. This space-formed-by-movement both captured and encouraged the growth of the reflective journey. This is what made it special.

Although learned through crisis, this habit has since become a natural way for me to reflect on just about anything over an extended period of time.

writing journey

It starts with writing a simple note.

writing a note

This initial piece of writing is very similar to what some note-takers call an “atomic note”, meaning it is a single thought or feeling that is formulated clearly, carefully and succinctly in a self-contained way that can always be refered back to. Mine rarely exceed a couple of brief paragraphs.

But I feel the need to add right away that, unlike with “atomic notes”, the goal here is not simply to capture “knowledge”, at least not in the normal sense. It is to take the first step in creating a topography of the reflective journey. Meaning that anything qualifies as the contents of a note, including and perhaps especially things like a nameless fear. When the note is written, do I sense that something that needed to be recognized has been recognized? That’s a note.

Limiting myself to writing notes that are short, simple, and few, is already an exercise in reflection. It’s going beyond the rant, the brainstorm, the stream-of-consciousness journaling to voice a key need. The need to acknoweldge a singular point of pain. The need to sing praises for the hero. The need to commemorate a smile.

Once that need is met, the rant is over. It disappears, and the little note remains.

Well… sometimes. The value of a note becomes clear with time, and I’d say that only about half of mine end up contributing to the “shape” of the “picture” in the long term.

I try to give my notes simple, evocative titles. Something like: 2023-06-07-avenue-jules-ferry. The date is important for a note’s place in the picture.

The next layer in the emergence of this picture is “stories”.

hearing and telling stories

“Stories” are the patterns that appear once I’m confronted with a given number of my notes. A story might be the striking irony between these notes and those notes; a theme that no one note could express, but which a concert of them witnesses to beyond a doubt; a nagging repetition…

The feeling of recognizing a “story” emerge is often the euphoric feeling that I finally have a voice. It does not seem to be my voice, but a voice that is emerging for me.

What I avoid at all costs is subsuming notes under stories in a hierarchical manner, for example, by creating a story folder and placing notes inside of it. A story is instead a lens through which notes *can* be viewed as having this or that meaning to them. But I need to be able to come back to those same notes and notice a new, different story emerge, without them having become fossilized into a structure. Many of my notes are simultaneously a part of several stories, seen a little differently in each. This is key.

So a story must not be a folder. Instead, a story is a series of references to other notes, accompanied by whatever commentary I find clarifying. It is a super-note connecting other notes as a way of apprehending them.

Discerning stories is the heart of this reflective process. It’s a way to hear what you’ve experienced, but to hear it in a way that has meaning. I find it matters very little if the meaning is encouraging or tragic, if patterns that emerge are patterns of progress or patterns of loss. The story is enough.

Stories work because I don’t start with them. I can almost never sit down and simply start “journaling” a story. Instead, I start with no structure at all, no sense of overarching meaning or direction. I can be lost, if that’s where I truly am, I can be confused. The only thing I need in order to begin is honesty, honesty enough to be clear about a single note.

I’ve found that if I can take that first step, then time will slowly do the rest. Eventually, stories begin telling themselves to me. Then, I tell the story myself, in the commentary included in every story file. Hearing and telling the story is the beginning of healing.

seeing the picture

The collection of all the stories is what I call the “picutre”, the motion-blur.

The picture can be read and interpreted in a myriad of ways, and it has many layers. But from it immense clarity can emerge. This is often when long-form, linear writing can finally be produced with lucidity.

More conventional, long-form writing will necessarily have to adopt a single structure, have a beginning and end, and so on. Because of this, it cannot replace the notes. It is a kind of two-dimensional cross-section of them, or rather of an encounter with them. The notes as a collective will be as inexhaustable compared to linear writing as experience itself is compared to the notes.

That’s the gist of how it all works. Writing like this can be done with a variety of media, including of course with paper. I’ve not tried that. Instead, below are a few details about how I’ve gone about writing my notes with software.

media: using software

local plain text

I use plain text files to create my notes and stories. This medium has turned out to be well suited for this kind of reflection, as well as quite enjoyable.

First, plain text has a simplicity that resembles writing by hand, with none of the compatibility concerns that come with rich text, and the potential for software free of unnecessary interfaces and buttons. Much like paper, the screen can be an open space.

I write in markdown (but only because I’m not cool enough for org mode). This means that I write my own formatting in a simple, visually intuitive markup (shown in grey below).

# 2023-06-07-avenue-jules-ferry Frankly, there tends to be very little markup in these kinds of notes. Occasionally a quote: > A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:\ > Its loveliness increases; it will never\ > Pass into nothingness…

More than with any other personal files, it matters to me that my notes be local and in an open format. They sit within a single 203 kilobyte folder, an average of 900 bytes per note.

markdown wiki editors

I use markdown editors to create, edit, and read my note files because they bring a key feature to the table. This feature isn’t the ability to render notes as a sleek webpage-like dodument — markdown is visually intuitive without rendering, a uniquely cool feature — nor is it the ability to use HTML inline, to style notes with CSS, or what have you, although all of this can be good fun.

For our purposes, markdown editors bring the crucial ability to use hyperlinks in order to make note references interactive. Linking is an inherent ability of markdown, which is based on HTML, but you need an editor that understands these markup languages if you want your links to work.

# story A story contains links such as [[this one]]. Links refer to various notes, e.g. [[2023-06-07-avenue-jules-ferry]].

What’s interesting about this kind of hypertex t is that we’re using a system invented for connecting data in order to connect traces of experience and reflection.

It’s not a must, but I’ve enjoyed using programs that facilitate linking to non-text files from inside a note. Sometimes I find it helpful to be able to reference different kinds of media on my machine when I’m writing, like photos or music. Files scattered throughout my local documents, obscure images from deep inside folder structures, are soon pulled into the slowly forming web of meaning. It can be exhilarating to watch unfold.

More could be said, but I think that covers what matters most.