Cardassian Alphabet - Part 2

In my last post, I told you about the basic workings of the Cardassian alphabet, this time around, I'm going to tell you how it all strings together (I promise there will be no big, complex words in this one).

Cardassian is written in both horizontal and vertical lines. The direction of reading is variable, although there are some typical indicators within a line of text and a paragraph that give the reader clues as the reading direction:

Cardassian text incorporates 3 primary punctuation marks and one secondary mark: for want of better names, I will call them small circle, large circle, paragraph circle and large dot.

• The small circle and large circle resemble a small and large circle respectively, outlined. There use is to generally give the reader a general sense of direction in reading a paragraph: text is read away from a small circle and toward a large circle.  
• The paragraph circle does what it's name says, marks paragraphs. usually, although by no means exclusively, it marks the beginning of a text.
• The large dot is used to cap the end of lines.

Cardassian text is usually overlaid over a central line, however it can be written without this central line where necessary. When this is the case in a paragraph, it's usually because the written information is of secondary importance, or is an annotation to the main line of text.

The overall writing direction for Cardassian is preferably from top to bottom, however, bottom to top is not uncommon.  Finally, letters can be written in a reverse direction; flipped horizontally in relation to the letters in a text, this serves a similar function to italics in English.

In the final part (which I promise will be shorter), I'll discuss numbers.


Originally posted by Greig Isles on 07 September 2012.