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Philfont: An Alternate Font for English.

If you have read my article on Awgzing you will know that I have experimented with a future form of modified English with some alternate characters. This is an extension of those ideas.

Over the centuries there have been a number of proposed alternate alphabets for English. Benjamin Franklin based his system on the Latin alphabet, adding a few new letters. Oddly for an English speaker there is no w in his alphabet, u being used for this as well. He also eliminates the letter j and then creates a letter pair to have the same sound. Variants of the h character represent a number of phonemes. The Shavian Alphabet attempted to use tall letters for voiceless consonants and deep ones for voiced. Unfortunately many of the Shavian letters are hard to distinguish from each other. Where they do resemble Latin letters they often have very different phonetic values, making transition harder.

I was reading about the Voynich manuscript and noticed the comment that most of the characters could be formed with just two strokes or less. While I quite like the Latin alphabet it is not perfect. Some of the characters can become obscured when hand-written. Even when typed, an r and an n together can be mistaken for an m.

Where possible the lowercase letters are formed with an initial downstroke when hand-written. See my article on improving handwriting for more on this. Letters formed from a c shape and a vertical such as b, d, p and q should be made with two downward strokes, the pen leaving the paper for the second action.

bcdeghijkl nopq suvxyz ( ) The changes to the lowercase letters are:-

a becomes an inverted v. This makes this commonly used vowel quicker to write and more distinct from badly formed letters such as d.

f becomes simpler, becoming an uncrossed hooked letter. The dot on j is optional.

m becomes a hooked letter, like an inverted capital J but with a longer hook.This resembles the Cykey finger position for m and also the character m in the Moon alphabet for the partially sighted. The new form of m removes any problems with it being mistaken for an rn.

r is changed slightly in shape to make it more distinct, but this is optional.

t is changed so that it can be written in one stroke. Where m now starts with a convex hook, t has a shorter concave start.

w is the last changed letter. The new form distinguishes it from badly formed vv or uu.

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To this collection are added two new letters. If you are writing phonetically C, Q and X are effectively redundant so our alphabet is actually 25 letters!

The ear shaped letter represents the vowel schwa if it is needed. This is easier to write than the reversed e currently used by SaypYu.

The second letter shown represents the IPA sound which is a common homophone in English that is spelt a variety of ways. The letter or is simply an o with a vertical line drawn through it. In brackets are a pair of alternate ways to make this letter, the first illustrating how the letter can be formed with an initial vertical downstroke.

A couple of other variations are possible. In the Awgzing article I used a sickle-shaped letter for g and for k. The more traditional forms of letter are probably clearer. In some handwriting e can be mistaken for an i or even a o! An alternate e would need to be easy to

form and distinctive. Handwritten braille uses a 45 degree for e so symbols such as , or may serve as alternates. A short 45 degree slash with a vertical start seems about right. The voiced and voiceless forms of th are represented as dh and h in SaypYu and these can easily be combined into a single character. and can be used for the word the.

The uppercase letters are relatively unchanged. Capital I gains a dot to distinguish it better from lower case l or the number 1. Similarly O gets a dot in its centre. Capital or is an O with a vertical line and capital schwa is the Cyrillic capital E.

ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ These new letter forms make handwriting quicker and clearer. I admit that is an idea that may be a little obsolescent in an age where nearly everyone types. If you have a need for quicker and clearer handwriting feel free to use and adapt this idea. Incorporate it into science-fiction artwork.

It would be nice to see a computer font in this form but I discovered with Awgzing that font creation is beyond the capabilities of the machines I have.

Phil Ws

21-2-15