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Classical Latin used all caps no spaces, so rather than caught on we moved away from it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua https://en.wikipedia.o
by ejolto 2y ago
Classical Latin used all caps no spaces, so rather than caught on we moved away from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua
- aredox 2y agoFrom the article: "paleographers today identify the extinction of scriptio continua as a critical factor in augmenting the widespread absorption of knowledge in the pre-Modern Era. By saving the reader the taxing process of interpreting pauses and breaks, the inclusion of spaces enables the brain to comprehend written text more rapidly."
- nequo 2y agoI_suppose_causality_would_be_difficult_to_establish_here_but_it_is_intriguing_nonetheless._A_little_space_between_words_helps_the_eye_quickly_see_word_boundaries_which_is_helpful_because_in_the_English_language_words_roughly_correspond_to_units_of_meaning.
- CRConrad 2y agoIn most languages, I'd think, not just English.
- thfuran 2y agoMy favorite deprecated writing convention is boustrophedon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon
- Wowfunhappy 2y agoI kind of love this! I feel like if I got used to reading letters backwards, this would actually be easier to parse, because I don't have to move my eyes back to the start of the next line.
- mabster 2y agoThat should totally become the norm. It looks so efficient. Way better than vertical writing systems, etc.
- tmtvl 2y agoJapanese also doesn't have casing or spaces, which can make text written solely in hiragana (like some Famicom games) hard to read. I don't know enough about Chinese and Korean to opine on how difficult they are to read and comprehend, but by using the four writing systems (hiragana, katakana, kanji, and western script), Japanese is easy enough to read.
- mabster 2y agoI've seen a few Famicom games do the clause spacing though, so it's easier to read. You can almost hear the emphasis tone on all the particles haha. And yeah in Japanese it's fine, there's a clear visual situation between the Kanji and Kana.
- olejorgenb 2y agoI've read that it such text usually was read out loud. Not sure if doing so actually make it easier to parse, but maybe latin was more phonetically regular than english? whenwordseparationbecamethestandardsystemitwasseenasasimplificationofromanculturebecauseitunderminedthemetricandrhythmicfluencygeneratedthroughscriptiocontinua