September 29, 2013

Hi Stefan -

Regarding the minute differences between the two symbols attached, I would say they are the same symbol, but with different Styles or Font designs - a little like Helvetica and Geneva - I am sure there will be more and more Font Designers wanting to keep the symbols the same in their meaning, but just change the "style" a little to make the writing look unique - but both would generally be read the same - even if someone thought that one had spread fingers and one did not, the chances of the meaning being different between them, when reading signs, are slight -

I know you are an artist and a Font Designer yourself, so of course you see these differences more than a lot of people - we are reading for meaning here most of the time, and are not that focused on symbol design but more on the SignSpellings and ways to write literature - which is a different focus -

Maybe in five or ten years we can re-visit the ISWA and add more symbols etc, but right now our focus is on getting out large books of literature and lots of Wikipedia articles written in ASL -

I hope someday your students will start writing Wikipedia articles in DGS - that will be an exciting new era!

Val ;-)

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