A Guide to Designing a Script

[The Professor]

A Guide to Designing a Script

Introduction

Those who want to design a script for a language generally do so for 1) a cypher or code, 2) a constructed language (conlang), or 3) both (this is where most tv based scripts start from).

This Guide is to provide a basic understanding of how natural scripts come to be and are written so that someone can use the basic principles in a constructed script.

Types of Script

There are 5 main types:

• Logographic/Ideographic. Each character represents a word or idea. Most natural scripts can trace back an origin here.
• Syllabary. Each character represents a syllable sound. This can include vowel sounds like Cuneiform or exclude them like Hieroglyphs.
• Abugida. Each character represents a consonant with obligatory added markings, often connected, to represent vowels. Often systemised so that the vowel marks are regular.
• Abjad. Each character represents a consonant. Often includes vowel marks or diacritics but not obligatory.
• Alphabet. Each character represents a consonant or vowel.

Most natural scripts still retain some ideo- or logograms such as number signs (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc), scribe abbreviations (e.g. &, £, @, etc), mathematical symbols (e.g. +, /, =, etc), punctuation, and others (such as modern emojis). Some natural scripts are mixtures of types: Hieroglyphs are a mix of logograms supplemented by syllable signs and/or ideograms, Japanese uses 2 syllabaries supplemented by logograms adapted from Chinese script.

Origins of Scripts

The 3, often complementary, ways scripts arise are:

Evolution of logo/ideograms - this is fairly rare.
Inspiration by neighbouring scripts.
Adoption and adaptation of neighbouring scripts - this is the most common origin usually due to similarity of neighbouring languages and civilisations.
Systemisation and standardisation of existing script. Essentially characters are grouped according to particular categories (often phonetically), some are discarded, some are altered to fit the category paradigm more closely, and new signs can be created to fit.​

Appearance of Scripts

How scripts and characters/letters look depends on how they are written.
If carved into wood or stone they have angular shapes - these letters are often called runes.
If pressed into clay it depends on the stylus but are often a mixture of simple lines and wedges - cuneiform.
If written on leaves the letters tend to be curved to avoid cutting the leaf.
If painted the brush will influence shapes - different colours can come into play changing sounds and meaning.
Most civilisations will have had at least one change in technique and some will maintain two types depending on purpose e.g. general records versus monument inscriptions. This means particular characters can become widely different as the script evolves.
As languages evolve so will scripts and this can provide a variety of related scripts in use across a wide region.

 

[The Professor]

Constructing a Script

Most people aren't going to want to put a huge amount of effort into their conscript, going from developing logograms and converting them into several syllabaries and alphabets, some of which will be extinct and maybe even lost.
However, a little effort can provide the appearance of this.
Questions to ask yourself are:
What is the language like? Does it have a regular syllable structure? Does the grammar have a particular phonetic arrangement? Is it humanlike or completely alien? Etc.
What's the culture like? Has there been a recent conquest and also an imposition of a new script? How closely is the current script associated with religion? Are there separate scripts for aspects of the culture? Etc.
How recently was writing adopted? When did the last change in writing implements occur? Does printing exist yet? Etc.
What natural language would you like your script to resemble?

A Simple Start

The simplest beginning is to take an existing natural script, borrow elements from it, and set up a phonetic grid grouping similar sounds together. You can then alter the letters as little or as much as needed, depending how much standardisation you want. This is a good trick for creating a base script that you can then "evolve" to generate your current one.
Another method is to combine different elements - e.g. lines, curves, wedges, dots, etc - and assign them systematically or randomly to your syllables/letters. This can also then be evolved.