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A two-dimensional script recording handshape, movement and facial expression.
Also known as: Sign writing script, Signed language script
SignWriting is a script for signed languages that records what a signer's body does: handshapes as small geometric figures, movement as arrows, contact as stars and dots, and facial expression in a schematic face. It is written in two dimensions rather than in a line, because a sign happens in space and in the face at once, and it is read as a picture of a body rather than as a sequence. It is used in teaching, in publishing and by some communities, and it is not a transcription convention like glossing.
Records what the body does rather than what a sign means: handshapes as geometric figures, movement as arrows, contact as stars and dots, and facial expression in a schematic face.
Contexts: History, Public information
Is written in two dimensions rather than along a line, because a sign happens in space and in the face at once — which makes it one of very few scripts that cannot be laid out as a sequence of characters.
Contexts: History, Public information
Is a writing system rather than a transcription convention, which distinguishes it from glossing: it is used to write signed languages for their own readers rather than to describe signs to readers of another language.
Contexts: History, Public information
Small geometric hand figures, curved and straight arrows, dots and stars arranged around a schematic circle standing for a face, grouped in a block rather than a row.
One is a writing system and the other a way of labelling signs in English text.