Do you use Underline for proper names?

[Valerie Sutton]

SignWriting List
August 13, 2014

Yes, that’s right. Just as Adam said, it is the writer’s preference…

I do not underline proper nouns. But I am not a teacher of Deaf children either. Teachers need teaching tools, for teaching language in schools, and most of the work here, in our organization, is writing literature in vertical columns, which is really for those who already know the language…

So there are different needs and uses.

James Shepard-Kegl in Nicaragua, who teaches in schools with Deaf children, and of course Stefan Woehrmann in Germany, who has taught SignWriting for over a decade as well to deaf children - both teachers feel the need to add that information. And I am glad to know it is useful. Both teachers also write SignWriting horizontally, from left to right as well. 

This is an important point. The underlining of anything in SignWriting only works well with horizontal writing.

In vertical writing, which our Deaf Action Committee requested back in 1984 (it took us time to develop the software for vertical writing) - but now we have vertical writing software and we are writing literature vertically for ASL.

In vertical columns the underlining can be confused with punctuation. Plus, when we write ASL literature, we are not teaching ASL, but instead writing for readers who already know ASL.

So if you look at the New Testament written in ASL, or the Wikipedia articles written in ASL, you will see that they are written vertically without underlining any part of ASL grammar -

So as Adam said, it is the writer’s preference…

And it is flexible - everyone is free to choose -

I agree that in spoken languages - at least in Portuguese and English, we capitalize proper nouns - that is a very good point - SignWriting does not have a standard for that, because underlining does not do well in vertical writing…

Sorry for the flexible answer - We have never found another solution so far - smile -

Val ;-)

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On Aug 13, 2014, at 7:09 AM, Adam Frost <icemandeaf at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> I don’t personally do it for ASL, but I know that Stefan does for DGS. It is really the writer’s preference. I personally don’t underline proper nouns just because I don’t really feel there is a need for it. That could just be because I know ASL very well, so I know when something is a proper noun and when it isn’t even if it were to be the same sign in both cases. Something to think about. :-)
> 
> Adam
> 
> On Aug 13, 2014, at 5:16 AM, Madson Barreto <barretobh at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Valerie and everyone
>> 
>> I just read a Joe Martin's paper and he said about the in Nicaraguan Sign Language that around 1998 has a orthographic rule that said to underline proper names for differ of common names/ simple names.
>> 
>> I've searched the SW-List archives and I found a 2005' discussion about it.
>> 
>> So, much time has passed...
>> My question is: this role is currently using in some Sign Language?
>> 
>> 
>> We believe it would be interesting for differ Sign Names (proper names in Sign Languages) of common signs. In spokes writings we use upper case, but in SignWriting?
>> 
>> 
>> What you thinking and use about?
>> 
>> 
>> Best reagards,
>> 
>> Madson and Raquel Barreto 
>> 
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> 
> ________________________________________________
> 
> SIGNWRITING LIST INFORMATION
> 
> Valerie Sutton SignWriting List moderator sutton at signwriting.org
> 
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> 
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