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Hi Alan, The "A" prefix is the temporal annotation. The technical term is the SignSpelling Sequence, which is used primarily for sorting. The "A" prefix is an ordered list of symbols. http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs6/sw0534-SignSpellingGuidelines-2008.pdf You can drop the "A" prefix if you only care about visual construction. If we consider a longer example, such as "world": AS18701S1870aS2e734S20500M18x33S1870an11x15S18701n18xn10S205008xn4S2e7340xn32 The "A" prefix always ends at an L, M, or R; as these are the markers for the start of a signbox in the left, middle, or right lanes respectively. In this example, the "A" prefix contains 4 symbol keys. "A S18701 S1870a S2e734 S20500". The rest of the example contains the spatial annotation: symbols with coordinates. M18x33S1870an11x15S18701n18xn10S205008xn4S2e7340xn32 A few quick rules -------------- The x-axis is negative on the left and positive on the right. The y-axis is negative on the top and positive on the bottom. The symbols are positioned by the top-left of the symbol glyph. The coordinate (0,0) is the center of a sign. The first part "M18x33" tells us that the signbox is in the middle lane with a max coordinate of (18,33). The rest is simply symbols with coordinates: S1870a n11x15 S18701 n18xn10 S20500 8xn4 S2e734 0xn32 The same string with explicit coordinates: S1870a at (-11,15) S18701 at (-18,-10) S20500 at (8,-4) S2e734 at (0,-32) The complete "Hello world." example is online with the various notations: http://www.signbank.org/SignPuddle1.6/canvas.php?ui=1&sgn=5&sid=663 Regards, -Steve