I need your help!

[Landau, James]

There is an old Jewish legend---I am told it is from the Zohar---about
how just before Creation the letters (Hebrew, of course) gathered around
the Divine Throne to each plead to be the first letter in the
alphabet-to-be.  I have seen several retellings of this legend, and each
one provides some anthromorphic description of the letters, e.g. the
letter Shin is described as the proudest of the letters because it (he?)
has three "crowns" (the serifs on top of the three close-to-vertical
branches of the Shin).

        - James A. Landau

-----Original Message-----
From: chris shaw [mailto:shawck at CHARTER.NET]
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 3:27 PM
Subject: I need your help!

I am writing a children's story, and have anthropomorphized letters of
the alphabet.  I have a need to make my letters move their "arms, legs,
and dots," as well as any other letter "body" part that might be able to
move.

Are there names for the different parts of a letter, such as the legs of
an A, or the individual two lines of a T, etc. etc.  What about the dot
on an i, as well as the curve on the bottom of the letter J?  My
linguistics professors at UWEC suggested I contact this listserv ---
that you fine folks have all the right answers!  Is there a reference I
can find for these names, or does one of you have a handy cheat sheet
for this?

If the parts don't have names (and what doesn't have a name in this
world?  :-) if you think you have a couple good names to use for parts,
feel free to share these as well...I'm more than happy to use really
neat fictitious names as well.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give!  Most of all, my characters
thank you too!

chris shaw

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