Sign Writing Sutton SignWriting

Sutton SignWriting, or SignWriting, was created in 1974 by Valerie Sutton. It uses visual symbols to represent the handshapes, movements, and facial expressions of signed languages. SignWriting is based on Sutton DanceWriting, a notation system for representing dance movements which Valerie Sutton developed in 1972.

SignWriting is a "movement-writing-alphabet", which can be used to write any signed language. It is the written form of 27 Sign Languages. The SignWriting alphabet writes the way the body looks, when people sign.

SignWriting can be used to write American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL) or any other variety of sign language. There are newspapers, magazines, dictionaries, and literature written in SignWriting. It is also used to teach signs and signed language grammar to novice signers, and can be used to teach skilled signers other subjects, such as maths, history or English.

A selection of basic ASL SignWriting signs

A selection of basic SignWriting signs

Sample text in ASL SignWriting (from Goldilocks and the Three Bears)

Sample text in ASL SignWriting (Goldilocks and the Three Bears)

Gloss and English version provided by Marq Thompson

Links

Sutton SignWriting - tutorials, dictionaries, fonts and other resources
http://www.signwriting.com/

Poetry, stories, songs, parts of the Bible and other written material in SignWriting
http://www.cyberjer.com/

The SignWriting Journal
http://sw-journal.ucpel.tche.br/

GebärdenSchrift in Deutschland (SignWriting in Germany)
http://www.gebaerdenschrift.de/

Learn American Sign Language with Rocket Languages

Other notation systems

Alchemical symbols, Blissymbolics, Graffiti, Shorthand, Solresol, Sutton SignWriting, Yi Jing Hexagrams

Learn American Sign Language (ASL) with RocketLanguages

Page last modified: 12.03.22

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