Writing only half of the Women's Script

[Scoop1407 he/they]

It's fairly obvious that if you design your writing characters to be symmetrical, the information density is half of what it could be (we also see that with palindrome words, but they are usually reduced in Vorin languages). Writing only the top or bottom half of the women's script can fit twice as much text in the same space.

Is there any evidence of this being done in-world? Or is symmetry too holy to destroy?

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

No evidence that I'm aware of certainly, but in-world characters do engage in profane practices for the sake of efficiency, (like the stormwarden writen language which is...like the real world equivalent of doing all your math in hexadecimal; totally sensible and arguably more succinct and mathematically perfect, but also will make 99% of people look at you like you're a witch...) so I wouldn't put it out of the realm of possibilities for someone like Jasnah or scholars like her to engage in for their private personal notes or journals!

Edit: thinking about it a little more, I would think that once Rosharns advance technologically to be writing on lined sheet paper instead of (I think?) The plain parchment sheets that are currently used, they would actually be able to obtain maximum information density on page by writing a line of script using tops only, then writing another line of text with bottoms only, for each line on the sheet. This would make the characters and text look absolutely insane for anyone not used to reading it, but would be very compact. 

Edited October 23, 2024 by hwiles

[Quantus he/him]

I dont recall anything to contradict it, so like to imagine a springy two-pronged stylus like a small set of pointy salad tongs or kid's chopsticks, so they draw out consistent symmetry just by squeezing the stylus prongs together.  

[Duxredux he/him]

1 hour ago, Scoop1407 said:

It's fairly obvious that if you design your writing characters to be symmetrical, the information density is half of what it could be (we also see that with palindrome words, but they are usually reduced in Vorin languages). Writing only the top or bottom half of the women's script can fit twice as much text in the same space.

Is there any evidence of this being done in-world? Or is symmetry too holy to destroy?

If I remember right, Jasnah taught Shallan a shorthand for use when scribing notes in meetings. For it to be functional, this script has to be information dense enough to keep pace with spoken Alethi, which seems phonetically compact with terms like "ado", "khokh", and "shash". Since it is referred to as shorthand, it likely skips steps to increase writing speed. Same concept of improving information density, different application.

That said, all books are hand written on Roshar to my knowledge. Once someone undertakes writing something that can last for generations, then the script itself can become an artform, like calligraphy.

Edited October 23, 2024 by Duxredux
rephrased for clarity

[Through The Living Grub He/Him]

I thought their written language were vertically symmetrical, as in the top is a reflection of the bottom. The words themselves aren't symmetrical, and the shorthand words are just shortened.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

2 hours ago, Duxredux said:

If I remember right, Jasnah taught Shallan a shorthand for use when scribing notes in meetings. For it to be functional, this script has to be information dense enough to keep pace with spoken Alethi, which seems phonetically compact with terms like "ado", "khokh", and "shash". Since it is referred to as shorthand, it likely skips steps to increase writing speed. Same concept of improving information density, different application.

That said, all books are hand written on Roshar to my knowledge. Once someone undertakes writing something that can last for generations, then the script itself can become an artform, like calligraphy.

I don't recall it being discussed on screen, but I assume that they're printing books using arrays of spanreeds at this point to partially simulate a printing press. 

the results probably have some quality control issues, and the manual labor would be kinda intensive, but a single scribe could write 10 books in the same amount of time as it takes to write one traditionally with Rosharns' existing IT resourcing capability.