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August 14

What is the best illustrative collage for writing systems?

I've been working on the trio

, and the existing collage used in the former article (top) dissatisfied me. Since I can't help but cause problems for myself, I decided to try and replace it with an ideal instance of the concept. My present attempt (bottom) doubled the number of examples, but I feel does a pretty good job if it's not overcrowded. In particular, I really wouldn't want to lose Maya, but it's the example I'm least sure of—I don't think it displays well here, plus I have no idea what to use as a representative "inscription". Thoughts?

Remsense诉 00:39, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the wiktionary links for phrases 3, 5 and 7 are broken. Also I guessed wrongly that the Tifinagh was Inuktitut syllabics. And we don't answer requests for opinions apparently so maybe you could rephrase the main question to make it more objective. And it probably shouldn't be a tour of all the most obscure and unusual writing systems, but if it was, I'd like to see Ogham, and Georgian scripts and Old Hungarian script or Old Turkic script or ... Klingon scripts? Can't illustrate them all. Card Zero (talk) 08:23, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, sorry about the opinion phrasing, I figured I was in the clear here since my question was more directly related to onsite work than much of the activity here. Remsense诉 10:22, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just In terms of graphics quality, I find the Egyptian Hieroglyphs part difficult to discern as the lines are much lighter than those of the other scripts. For Chinese, for esthetic and historical reasons, I might have expected something in a Regular script font rather than the Heiti font used now. You might also want to experiment with getting rid of the grid lines around each box, or even making the visual distribution of the items a bit less rigid? I agree that the Maya glyphs are also quite difficult to discern, but I don't know enough about Maya to judge how that could be improved. Out of curiosity, does the Chinese string 天地玄黄 mean something? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:44, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, those are both points I have yet to address and should've make as such explicit here. It would make sense to have all glyphs be roughly equal stroke thickness, of course accounting for meaningful graphetic differences.

天地玄黄 are the first four characters of the Thousand Character Classic, which is a nice pick imo because it sorta knits distant periods of Chinese history together—the phrase itself is describing the mythological creation of the universe in Chinese cosmology ("Heaven and earth were black and yellow"), the work was written during the 1st millennium, and then served as a literacy guide for centuries afterward, even into the 20th century. Diaspora communities all over would actually gamble on a bingo game except people selected one of the 1000 characters instead of a number.

I would've considered the first four Heavenly Stems as those are more firmly lexicographically ordered and are often used similar to the letters of the alphabet in that regard, but 甲乙丙丁 is simply not graphically representative of what most Chinese characters—i.e. compounds, not simplex forms like these—actually look like. Remsense诉 10:19, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the earlier hieroglyphic writing with the bird looks a lot more "hieroglyph-like", for someone only briefly acquainted with the script. My impression is that it's one of the most iconic characters. Korean Hangeul might also be interesting to include, due to its systematic approach to shapes, and syllabic blocks; both being unique features, as far as I know. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:55, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If I had two more slots, hangul + a proper syllabary would be the next ones up. I think my eight present selections of the four consensus independent inventions of writing in human history—though of course presented following additional centuries of evolution in each case—plus the #1 alphabet, the #1 abugida, braille, and finally an abjad that rounds out representation of Africa as a bit of a wildcard pick is pretty set. Remsense诉 10:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't sure on why Tifinagh was included, as we already have Latin as another pure alphabet. (Although apparently it was very old.) It might be a better alternative to include a syllabary, there, I believe, such as Linear B. But the Arabic abjad is also a good choice. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:03, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I may swap out Tifinagh with Arabic, yes. Remsense诉 11:08, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is the goal to show a bunch of iconic cliches, or to show scripts that are potentially mysterious and intriguing to the viewer (so maybe choose Demotic, for instance, because it's less recognizable)? Is it supposed to be a sampling of scripts of the world by land area (Antarctica poses a problem), a top ten by modern day popularity, by prettiness, by influence (which means including certain ancient scripts) or by originality, or somehow all of the above? I imagine you might want a sampling of scripts chosen first for distinctiveness in the way they function, and secondly for being well known, but it would be good to decide about these parameters before looking for candidates. Maya scores highly for prettiness and originality, but low for popular use and influence, and in terms of exposing the viewer to new things, I don't know, fairly low (and thus fairly high for recognizability, if that's desirable). Maybe they should just be "notable", which is to say I should stop making it difficult by asking these things. Card Zero (talk) 16:08, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The aim is to juxtapose examples that display important variations in both the history, as well as the graphical, functional, and typological properties of writing systems, in a sense that's as representative as possible of the sum total of ways people have written. Remsense 诉 18:05, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I kinda interpreted the query as showing a scope of geographical spread, featural qualities and distinctive visual appearances. But it might be opinion, I'm not sure on the regular Wikipedia procedure to handle these matters. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:45, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From what I can see, Maya script is about the only native American (as in, from the two American continents) script that's about fully deciphered, and therefore warrants its place just for representation. And it's visually interesting, as well. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:52, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our opinions are invaluable in our primary task of original tertiary analysis, as distinguished from original research. Remsense 诉 18:52, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Remsense: That's verging on WP:OR. It's reliable sources which should be providing illustrations showing variations through history, not you. I've no problem with a pretty diagram for the articles' infoboxes, but it should be no more than that. I agree the original you posted is a bit unsatisfactory. Four examples are enough, though; if you want to be different, junk the clichéd Latin, Chinese, Egyptian, "Indian", Greek, Russian, etc, and pick from Ogham, Cree, Aztec, Geʽez or similar outlying ones to go alongside your interesting Braille. Bazza 7 (talk) 18:53, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As I've just happened to point out above, it is not, as no new claims are being made. The analysis that happens to be behind editorial decisions is distinct from those claims made by the resulting text—this is why OR is explicitly allowed on talk pages; we're allowed to think for ourselves when making editorial decisions as long as the results contain no OR. Here, existing information is being presented in a new manner, but one in line with what sources say. I understand the impulse to view every possible vector of meaning as a claim that should be WP:V, but obviously this is untenable unless we want to problematize the very idea of tertiary synthesis. If there's not a clear WP:NPOV reason to use one mode of illustration over another, we're very much allowed to make editorial decisions for ourselves. Remsense 诉 19:01, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Remsense: Sorry, I wasn't very clear: I was referring specifically to your aim being to juxtapose examples that display important variations in both the history... I think it's for sources to determine what the importance of any variations is, not us. Bazza 7 (talk) 19:31, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right—my understanding of what's important here has been informed by the repeated emphases made within the sources. Remsense 诉 19:33, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Islamic calligraphy, Oracle bone script (or the Shang bronzeware script because it's so blatantly pictures), shorthand, emoji ("picture characters"), Tengwar, Sinhala script because it looks nice, Kurrent, Anatolian hieroglyphs, GHS hazard pictograms, Indus script. Not sure which of those various variations are the important variations, but maybe one of them grabs you. Card Zero (talk) 10:43, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've definitely thought I should have a particularly calligraphic representation for one—if I swap Tifinagh to Arabic I might select that.

Also, I do have to vent like an ingrate for a moment that much of my recent work has been straightening out that writing should generally be reserved on Wikipedia to refer to glottographic writing per the modern academic consensus, i.e. not systems of visual/tactile signs in the broadest sense.

. Remsense ‥ 诉 10:58, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the explosive substance warning symbol is pronounced "arrgh!". No, you make a fair point. Card Zero (talk) 11:06, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just like using Comic Sans instead of Caslon does not amount to a different writing system, it may be questioned whether braille is really a different writing system, instead of a tactile version of (Latin) alphabetic writing. --Lambiam 12:35, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If we use the fairly common bipartite definition of "writing system" as both the script and an accompanying orthography, then it's indisputable in my view. It makes a fair amount of sense to me that two writing systems would not be considered "the same" if no reader can be expected to understand one simply by their having a working understanding of the other. (Not nearly enough attention has historically been paid to how etic shapes characterize writing systems, but it's an area that has started attracting more interest recently.) Remsense ‥ 诉 12:49, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another iteration, care to comment @Card Zero @Lambiam @Wakuran @Future Perfect at Sunrise? Egyptian is still thin, but that's the fault of the SVG → raster rendering; I'm trying to fix it. Remsense ‥ 论 21:08, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I still think the former hieroglyphic version looks more iconic. What does the text say? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:19, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The older version says 'brain'; I picked a word that meant 'inscription'. I have nothing but arbitrary choices to make here, but I suppose 'brain' seemed particularly puerile. Remsense ‥ 论 21:21, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have a request: could the writing system article have a section dedicated to clearly distinguishing pictographic, ideographic, morphographic, logographic, and any other jargon term that means a subtle variation of "picture writing"? Because one use for the article would be to help me decide which term to use in which context, and it isn't currently much help there. Also the Wiktionary entry for "morphograph" says it means a fragment such as a suffix or prefix used in teaching spelling, so that adds to the confusion.

I could probably fix the hieroglyphs, looks like individual detailed elements should increase in size independently before increasing stroke width. Card Zero (talk) 07:52, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's definitely an area I want to make more clear, though my ability to do so is limited since these terms are not used defined uniformly between sources, so we'd be leaning on etymology. I don't really see the separate pedagogical sense of "morphograph" as an issue, though. Remsense ‥ 论 07:55, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, an issue for Wiktionary, perhaps (since it gives no other sense). I was looking just now at Ideogram, which is pretty good at clearing things up, but what I'd really like is for all the confusable terms - including obsolete or less useful ones - to be laid out in parallel, in a table or a list, and discussed tersely. Though I daresay WP:NOTDICTIONARY, but dictionaries wouldn't offer a side-by-side comparison. Card Zero (talk) 08:24, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this could be good too—if not a table, then maybe a definition list—the question for me is where best to put it. Remsense ‥ 论 08:29, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At the top! "Articles should begin with a good definition or description," and you mention a lot of these things in the first two paragraphs already. Just wrap it up with a summary, mention "pictogram", and tell me what makes ideograms lack the ability to express a broad range of ideas, and you know, all the rest of it, pithily. Pithy please. Card Zero (talk) 08:49, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I only hesitate because I think extended discussion of what something isn't doesn't usually belong in the lead, plus the coverage of writing systems has overfixated on this primary typology to the almost total exclusion of other aspects—though obviously it's the primary typology for a reason. Remsense ‥ 论 10:34, 25 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]