A Letter to Words

Remember learning the alphabet? That process we all went through in learning how to read and write? It's a distant, happy memory for alot of us - of making letters appear by connecting various lines and curves together in relationship with ourselves making the connection. Although some of us (or probably just me) were content with having it end there, the thrill of achievment in individual letter rendering was soon replaced by the next level of challenge - constructing words with the letters we had mastered.

Gee Golly Woshadonna! - Does it ever end? - I mean...

... the answer is NO and

it's all our fault! Somewhere along the line it has to be. We just could'nt leave well enough alone could we? NOOOO! - we had to use our newfound powers! Now, - not only did we know what words sounded like and meant (many of them), but we knew what they looked like and even how to make them appear on paper!

AVARICE! - Complete and total AVARICE!!! - "Whoopee! - Look what I can do!"

Yeah - it was pretty cool! - and even cooler was our ability to to recognize words as patterns but ah haaa! That was mostly due to a conformity by consensus of learned letter forms.

Without standards of shape and form, instantaneous recognition of whole words soley by their shape would not be possible (or extremely difficult - just look at a Grateful Dead Poster). We were taught to write our letters within predetermined/acceptable parameters but what made the predetermined parameters "acceptable"?

If you can read this - Thank a Teacher...(and your Lucky Stars)!

Early on in the development of written language, the conceptual good fortune of having letters represent individual, phonetic sounds lent itself not only to the construction of known words, but the pronunciation and even translation of those unfamiliar inter-dynamically! - But it all goes back to letter construction.




Of all the typestyles available, most were accepted due to the way they looked when assembled into words. Improvements were constantly being made with many being modifications of those typefaces already in use however modified or supposedly made better so as to lend themselves more fluidly to word recognition.

But there is a vice versa effect - in fact there are several which are subjects for future entry.