David Reimer sent me a link to a fantastic discussion of the origin of the alphabet on a very cool typography blog. It is one of the best concise and illustrated treatments that I’ve seen. It begins at Sumer (doesn’t everything, really?) and goes up through Roman typography. Enjoy!
Hi, Charles, very nice site. Thanks indeed. It’s not too surprising, though. Type/Script designers, as part of their training, are supposed to research any script down to its origins before even thinking of creating a new mutation of an existing design. Most pros are delighted to dig into the origins.
I’m a trained script/font designer and designed scripts for 5 languages so far. That’s why I ended up a historian of writing systems.
I did spot one error, not their fault. It’s written up that way in the older books on Greek epigraphy. I’ll contact them.
Thanks again for pointing out this site.