Scriptio continua
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Scriptio continua ("Continuous script" in Latin) is a style of writing without spaces between words or sentences, with all the text in upper case, and with no punctuation. In the West, from the first extant Greek texts, until around 1000 AD, alphabetical texts were written without spaces between words, and in the earlier periods in all upper-case. It is still in use in Thai, other Southeast Asian abugidas, and in languages that use Chinese characters (Chinese and Japanese) though with sentence breaks. Modern Chinese differs from ancient scriptio continua in that it does at least use punctuation, although this was borrowed from the West only about a century ago. Before this, the only forms of punctuation found in Chinese writings were punctuations to denote quotes, proper nouns, and emphasis.
Before the advent of the codex (book), Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls. Reading continuous script on a scroll was more akin to reading a musical score than reading text. The reader would typically already have memorized the text through an instructor, had memorized where the breaks where, and the reader almost always read aloud, usually to an audience in a kind of reading performance, using the text as a cue sheet. Organizing the text to make it more rapidly ingested (through punctuation) was not needed and eventually the current system of rapid silent reading for informating replaced the older slower performance declaimed aloud for dramatic effect.[1]
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[edit] Examples
[edit] Latin text
Latin text in scriptio continua (From Cicero's De finibus bonorum et malorum):
- NEQVEPORROQVISQVAMESTQVIDOLOREMIPSVMQVIADOLORSITAMETCONSECTETVRADIPISCIVELIT
Which in modern punctuation is:
- Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit…
- ‘Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain…’
[edit] Modern English
Spring and Fall (1880) by Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered in scriptio continua (21-chars per line):
- MARGARETAREYOUGRIEVI
- NGOVERGOLDENGROVEU
- NLEAVINGLEAVESLIKETH
- ETHINGSOFMANYOUWIT
- HOURFRESHTHOUGHTS
- CAREFORCANYOUAHASTH
- EHEARTGROWSOLDERITW
- ILLCOMETOSUCHSIGHTS
- COLDERBYANDBYNORSPAR
- EASIGHTOUGHWORLDS
- OFWANWOODLEAFMEALL
- IEANDYETYOUWILLWEEPA
- NDKNOWWHYNOWNOMA
- TTERCHILDTHENAMESOR
- ROWSSPRINGSARETHHESAM
- ENORMOUTHHADNONOR
- MINDEXPRESSEDWHATHE
- ARTHEARDOFGHOSTGUES
- SEDITISTHEBBIGHTMANW
- ASBORNFORITISMARGARE
- TYOUMOURNFOR
Spring and Fall (1880) by Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered in normal punctuation:
- Margeret, are you grieving
- Over Goldengrove unleaving?
- Leaves, like the things of man, you
- With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
- Ah! as the heart grows older
- It will come to such sights colder
- By and by, nor spare a sigh
- Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
- And yet you will weap and know why.
- Now no matter, child, the name:
- Sorrows springs are the same.
- Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
- What heart heard of, ghosts guessed:
- It is the blight man was born for,
- It is Margaret you mourn for.
[edit] Chinese language
Here is an example of a normal Chinese sentence, then what it would look like with spaces between words, then a pinyin transcription (in which words are normally divided), and finally an English translation:
- 北京在中国北方；广州在中国南方。
- 北京 在 中国 北方； 广州 在 中国 南方。
- Běijīng zài Zhōngguó běifāng; Guǎngzhōu zài Zhōngguó nánfāng.
- Beijing is in Northern China; Guangzhou is in Southern China.
[edit] References
- ^ Richard A. Lanham (2006). The Economics of Attention. ISBN 0-226-46882-8. page 113-115
