Daniel Yacob wrote as follows.
>
>In the ethiopic case it is 1362 (four dots like ::) interlaced with 5 red
dots
>in the sign of the cross that is the most common. This is 9 dots
altogether
>and at a glance looks like a colorful paragraph separator. Any punctuation
>or numeral may receive extra flourishes of red (1364 receives red strokes
>about as often), there is no semantic impact on the character. It is a
practice
>relegated by and large to religious works, scribes themselves have told me
that
>they have no rhyme nor reason for why they've made one character or word
red in
>one sentence and not the next -save for possible subliminal divine
inspiration
>at that particular instant :)
>
>The capability to the same electronically would be well received.
>
In the handwritten form, could you please say whether the adding of the red
increases the width of the area needed to represent the character?
Also, when handwritten, does the scribe have a black pen in one hand and a
red pen in the other so that colouring takes place on a character by
character basis as writing proceeds, or does the scribe put down one pen and
pick up another, and, if so, is that on a character by character basis or is
that on the basis of producing a number of characters in black and then
adding the red afterwards. This would seem to be possibly significant due
to the possible need to allow for the greater width of the area used for a
character that is later to receive red flourishes.
William Overington
27 June 2002
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Jun 27 2002 - 01:27:26 EDT