SignWriting | |
---|---|
Script type | |
Time period | 1974–present |
Direction | Horizontal (left-to-right) or vertical (top-to-bottom) |
Languages | American Sign Language, Danish Sign Language and other sign languages |
ISO 15924 | |
ISO 15924 | Sgnw (095), SignWriting |
Unicode | |
Unicode alias | SignWriting |
U+1D800–U+1DAAF | |
Website SignWriting.org Mobile m.SignWriting.org |
Sutton SignWriting, or simply SignWriting, is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that make up written English words. It was developed in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, a dancer who had, two years earlier, developed DanceWriting. Some newer standardized forms are known as the International Sign Writing Alphabet (ISWA).