Chapter Two
Alphabets
Terms
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- Arabic writing
- a type of writing with curving calligraphic gestures probably originated before AD500
- signatures
- Two, four, or eight sheets - then folded, stitched, and bounded
- Kufic
- a bold inscriptional lettering with extended thick characters and was widely used on coins, manuscripts, and inscriptions on metals & stone.
- Boustrophedon
- "to plow a field with an ox"
- Capitalis Quadrata
- Square capitals - a style widely used from the second century AD until the fifth century
- Sejong
- a Korean monarch who introduced Hangul
- Substrate
- papyrus or surface
- Codex
- a revolutionary design format where parchment was gathered and folded, stitched, and combined like a modern book
- Phoenicians
- (2 million BC) Became seafaring merchants who engineered the best, fastest sailing ships
- Hangul
- one of the most scientific writing systems ever invented
- Minoan civilization
- a civilization that existed on the mediterranean island of Crete
- Serif
- originally chisel marks made by the "clean up" strokes as the stone-mason finished carving a letter
- Byblos
- the oldest Phoenician city-state
- Spurius Carvillius
- designed the letter G to replace the Greek letter z (zeta)
- Capitalis Monumentalis
- monumental capitals where simple geometric lines were drawn in thick and thin strokes, with organically straight/curves
- Sinaitic script
- an anchrophonic adaptation of hieroglyphics
- Unicals
- a more rounded writing style developed by the Greeks
- Cadmus of Miletus
- Invented history, created prose, or designed some letters of the Greek alphabet
- Ras Shamra script
- a true Semitic alphabetic script, which used thirty cuneiformlike characters to represent elementary consonant sounds
- Alphabetic order
- the sequence in which the letters are memorized
- Acrophonic
- a pictorial symbol or hieroglyph used to stand for the initial sound of the depicted object
- Greek alphabet
- an alphabet occupying a major position in the evolution of graphic communication
- Scroll
- (called a rotulus) papyrus scrolls has a clumsy process of unrolling and rolling the scrolls to look up information
- Square Hebrew alphabet
- an alphabet spawned by Aramic alphabet with possible Old Hebrew influence
- Sui generis
- a writing developed in Byblos, which used pictographic signs devoid of any remaining pictorial meaning
- Votive stela
- a stela with four figures and the letters became symmetrical geometric constructions of timeless beauty
- Crete
- a Greek island where the Phiastos Disk was founded and has pictographs and seemingly alphabetic forms imprinted on both sides in spiral bands
- Naskhi
- a cursive style lettering, ideal for writing on papyrus - which evolved into the modern Arabic scripts
- Aramaic script
- a major derivation from North Semitic Script that consisted of twenty-two letters for consonantal sound written from right to left
- Rotulus
- Scroll
- Phoenician alphabet
- early scripts found from ancient Phoenicia
- Calligraphy
- a style of lettering where its vertical ascenders followed by horizontal curved strokes below convey a kinetic rhythm as it moves across the page
- Vellum
- the finest parchment made from smooth skins of newborn calves
- King Eumenes II of Pergamum
- Ruled c. 197-160BC and engaged in a intense library building rivalry with Ptolemy V.
- Phoenicia
- a culture on the Western Shores of the Meditteranean Sea in what is now Lebanon and parts of Syria and Israel
- Principle of movable type
- a principle where each character are impressed carefully
- North Semitic Writing
- a term used for early alphabetic writing found throughout the Western Mediterranean region
- Capitalis Rustica
- Rustic capitals - consisted of condensed letterforms that saved space and written quickly
- Qur'an or Koran
- a holy book written in the Arabic alphabet - which Muslims believed it contains great truths revealed by Allah (God) to the Prophet Mohammed
- Etruscans
- a people whose civilization on Italian peinsula reached its height during the 6th century BC
- Latin alphabet
- contained twenty-one letters, came to the Romans from Greece by the way of the ancient Etruscans
- Alphabet
- a set of visual symbols or characters used to represent the elementary sounds of a spoken language
- Ptolemy V of Alexandria
- Ruled c. 205-181 BC and placed an embargo on papyrus shipments to prevent Eumenes from continuing rapid production of scrolls