NORWAY Smooth and Jerky Circles

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
July 11, 2005

> Ingvild Roald wrote:
> I do *not* want to make SignWritng jerky ... It is beautiful as it  
> is, it's just that I do not know enough ..
> So please, when you have time, can you explain to me and others how  
> to write jerky motions? Like the 'signing-like-a-hearie'...

Hello Ingvild and Everyone!
I knew you did not want to change the symbols, but I had to smile at  
it...I can see how someone could think there is a different meaning  
between those symbols...Those are just typeface styles, as you  
know...Steve and Dianne Parkhurst used the new style in their  
textbook and then after that several other people started using that  
etc...so I had to document the usage.

The dotted-lined circles had a reason to be dotted in the original  
SignWriter DOS system....I did not want the Wrist-Joint Circles to  
get confused with the Elbow-Joint Circles...When we do the sign for  
SIGN, we are doing that circle from the elbow...So I was trying to  
make the circles look very very different from each other so that we  
could create later, a very small elbow circle, that is the size of  
the wrist circle, but could not be confused with a wrist  
circle...Once you blend the dotted line together into one solid line,  
the only differnce between a tiny elbow circle and a wrist circle  
would be the fact that the arrow has an outside stem line in the  
wrist circle symbol...otherwise they look very much the same...I am  
always trying to think through if one symbol could be confused with  
another...Symbols have to look quite different to be easily read...

But having said that, the solid line elbow circles are working for  
people, so I believe my concerns were not valid in this case....So it  
is easier to write a solid lined circle too...

I will prepare a lesson about Smooth and Jerky circles later today -  
Thanks for your questions!  Val ;-)




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