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<body><br>> <br>> If we think about how little detail we write when writing English, it <br>> is amazing how much we understand anyway. Right now, I am not writing <br>> voice intonation, while writing English, or whether my voice remains <br>> at high pitch or low pitch at different times...if we had to write a <br>> unit line to show that my voice remains high for these five words, <br>> and low for the next five words, that feels more like research or <br>> perhaps music or dance, than a written language...<br><br>Very true! There are a lot of things we do in spoken language that don't actually need to be written; and the same goes for signed languages. The big question is, what does need to be written and what can be left out? ;-)<br> <br>> Just my thoughts...<br>> <br>> As far as one Facial Expression lasting over several signs...most of <br>> the time now, there are Facial Circles over most signs anyway, so I <br>> would just write the same Facial Expression over all the signs that <br>> use it...that is easy and compact...the reader who is reading quickly <br>> will have no question what is happening with each sign...no referring <br>> back to the facial expression at the beginning of the Unit Line...<br>> <br>> Thoughts?<br>> <br>> Val ;-)<br>> <br>I've noticed the same thing about Facial Circles, and that's exactly what I've started doing; putting Expression into every Facial Circle I write. (I didn't do that consistently in Sleeping Beauty, mostly because I was having trouble getting multiple Faces exactly on top of each other and I got tired of doing it over and over again. But when I'm writing by hand, I put in something for the eyes and something for the mouth on pretty much everything.) Using Unit Lines as quotation marks, though . . . I could actually see that being helpful. After all, we have extended quotes in English all the time, and when we hit an "end-quote", we don't look back to the beginning. I could advocate for writing Facial Expression in all (or most) of the Facial Circles even within a Unit Line, and only using them to mark direct quotations. At the moment, I'm using lanes to mark direct quotes (i.e. roleshifting); but in natural signing, you usually move over before the quote starts, so shifting lanes late isn't a great solution. Actually, Val, is there another way SignWriting uses to mark direct quotes? I know I've seen something that looks like quotation marks in the SignText symbolset, but I never felt they'd be useful for vertical writing. Just my thoughts.<br><br>KJ<br /><hr />Connect to the next generation of MSN Messenger <a href='http://imagine-msn.com/messenger/launch80/default.aspx?locale=en-us&source=wlmailtagline' target='_new'>Get it now! </a></body>
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