[sw-l] Writing on Ruled Paper

[Sandy Fleming]

Hello List  :)

In my previous email I wrote:

> I also think it's better for vertical writing 
> if the page is landscape rather than portrait.

This got me thinking - if I'm going to turn a page to landscape for vertical writing then ordinary ruled paper might do for SignWriting.

After some experimentation I enjoyed writing in the format shown in this attachment.

This is the previous autobiography again, but on ruled paper. The only spare ruled paper I had to hand was a small exercise jotter, six inches by eight (it looks square in the attachment because I cropped the margins to keep the gif small), but with rules I managed to get the whole of the bio onto it, which before had taken up a whole sheet of A4 because of sprawl and lack of control!

The actual jotter lines didn't scan, though the lines I ruled to mark out the paper in columns can be seen. You can make out where the lines were by looking at the row of dots along the top. As you can see I drew an initial column line and then another column line every five jotter lines. I originally allowed an extra line so that the head could be drawn across two jotter lines but this made the head too large for comfortable drawing. So now I've got it that the head (unless offset to right or left) is drawn to fit exactly between the middle two lines.

I found it much easier to write this way, as it was easier to see where to start each new sign. I can also write in much less space because there's a heavy line to stop me wasting space by going too far into the unwritten area on the right.

I found some other nice bonuses. Punctuation is much easier to write, as instead of having to scribble a heavy line for a period to distinguish it from a comma, I made the convention that a line going right across the column is a period and a line going just across the centre three jotter lines is a comma. I decided that the best way to draw the shoulder and hip lines is from the middle of the second jotter column to the middle of the fourth jotter column (this is a bit smaller than a comma).

I like it, a lot!

Incidentally, I've been using the convention, as you can see from my signs for "move" and "grow up" in this attachment, that if the eyes are written to be looking at the start of a movement, then they follow the hand throughout the whole movement. This seems natural enough, doesn't it?

Sandy
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