<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Well, this is just my 2¢ worth, but it seems to me that most horizontal writing systems lose nothing being written vertically whereas SW seems to miss more when it is written horizontally. I would suggest that when we do comparisons, we do them vertically. Or we simply put the horizontal text before or after the vertical text. Just my thought.<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Stuart</DIV><DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On May 12, 2007, at 10:56, Charles Butler wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">I hope, however, we will always have a choice in rendering SW as horizontal or vertical, precisely for use in classrooms where one is trying to compare grammar for a horizontally written language and a vertically written one. I know we miss lanes with that, and that is an essential feature of sign language, not really sure how to point out that other than both vertical and horizontal renderings. One does that with Chinese or Korean, where a word or meaning is compact in the Chinese or Korean and then expanded in the English or other alphabet. <BR><BR>Fingerspelling compared letter for letter, sign cluster for grammatical phrase, there will always be a good reason for horizontal possibilities, even with vertical preferred.<BR><BR>Charles<BR><BR><BR><B><I>Sandy Fleming <<A href="mailto:sandy@scotstext.org">sandy@scotstext.org</A>></I></B> wrote:<BLOCKQUOTE class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> On Sun, 2007-05-06 at 08:21 -0700, Charles Butler wrote:<BR>> Sandy, Valerie, and others.<BR><BR>> The only drawback I see is the Gaebardenschrift methodology for<BR>> full-mouth articulation as a multiple overlapping head would not<BR>> easily be possible using this method. <BR><BR>Charles, Val, Stefan,<BR><BR>As you all know, SignWriting was originally written horizontally, but<BR>vertical SignWriting is now preferred. Fingerspelling seems to be going<BR>the same way, with a recent suggestion of vertical fingerspelling on the<BR>list finding approval. After all, once you decide to write vertically,<BR>anything that's written horizontally within the column is "going against<BR>the grain" and it should come as no surprise that writing it vertically<BR>is an improvement.<BR><BR>I would suggest that Mundbildschrift could also better be written<BR>vertically within vertical SignWriting (see attached diagram and excuse<BR>the badly-drawn mouths!).<BR><BR>As I've said before, I prefer faces to be opaque so that any background<BR>doesn't render the expression difficult to read. This seems to work very<BR>well with vertical Mundbildschrift, as the head circle doesn't interfere<BR>with any other part of the facial expression and, after the intial<BR>expression which might contain eyes and nose, only the mouthings are<BR>shown.<BR><BR>I understand that horizontal Mundbildschrift my be preferred in<BR>educational texts aimed at helping Deaf children who are learning to<BR>write in an oral language, but for normal SignWriting texts for everyday<BR>readers, this seems to me to be a very clear, natural and compact way to<BR>write Mundbildshrift, and no problems with it going against the grain<BR>and right out of the column!<BR><BR>To me, MUndbildschrift isn't just an education concern, it's also<BR>important for everyday SignWriting to show "native" sign language lip<BR>patterns (such as the "po", "vee", "lum" &c of BSL).<BR><BR>Any thoughts?<BR><BR>Sandy<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>