The Minimal Stacking alphabet was invented by David Conant as an alternative alphabet for English. He use it for notes, grocery lists, experimentation, and mostly for fun.
The idea behind creating a 'minimal' alphabet was to represent each letter of the regular English alphabet with the simplest marking possible while still being distinguishable from each other and also having blocks of text look interesting and even slightly attractive. It consists of straight line segments, lines curved just enough to be distinguishable from straight lines, and three circles for lesser used letters. The frequency of usage for each letter was considered so that, in general, the smallest and simplest shapes are used for the most frequently used letters. The letter 'E' is simply a dot, "X" is a large oval. I also took into account second order letter distribution. For each letter I chose a compatible shape for the four likeliest letters to follow. This is not possible in all cases, but for the majority of text output the result should be unambiguous.
The numerals, which are also fairly minimal, were created last; almost as an after-thought. They were added for completeness. There is no punctuation, no capitalization ... only the letters and spaces between words.
With just a few character shapes to choose from, letters are distinguished from one another by vertical position. There are three vertical segments; Upper Segment, Middle Segment, and Lower Segment. Most of the shapes can occur in the upper and lower segment and represent different letters. A small vertical line in the lower segment represents 'A', in the upper segment it is an 'I'. The horizontal line is a 'D' in the upper segment, a 'T' in the middle segment, and 'R' in the lower segment. The letter 'E', being the most commonly used in English, is written as a single dot and can occur in any, and even multiple, segments. The letters that occur in the top segment are [CDEHILMPUY], middle segment [ET], lower segment [AEFGKNORSV]. The less frequently used letters [BJQWXZ] have larger shapes that take up all three segments and are always written by themselves. Since there are three distinct vertical segments for writing, this results in the possibility of stacking one letter over another. Assigning shapes to letters was not necessarily done to maximize (or minimize) stacking, but writing one letter on top of another happens frequently.
There is some leeway in where to position the 'E' dot. If there is a choice, it should be placed where it is clear where it belongs in a word or at least where it looks best. In the Article below, the word 'free' is written with the 'e' on the same level as the 'r'. In the word 'endowed', the 'e' has to be positioned over the 'n', but the 'e' in 'ed' is on the same level as the d. Otherwise it may look like it was spelled 'endowde'.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
Constructed scripts for: Ainu | Arabic | Chinese languages | Dutch | English | Hawaiian | Hungarian | Japanese | Korean | Lingala | Malay & Indonesian | Persian | Tagalog / Filipino | Russian | Sanskrit | Spanish | Taino | Turkish | Vietnamese | Welsh | Other natural languages | Colour-based scripts | Tactile scripts | Phonetic/universal scripts | Constructed scripts for constructed languages | Adaptations of existing alphabets | Fictional alphabets | Magical alphabets | A-Z index | How to submit a constructed script
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