Your greek handwriting style...

[1%homeless]

Which kind of epsilon do you write? The reversed 3 or a C with a line in the middle? I like the C with a line in the middle, but reversed 3 is a little bit faster to write. Anyways, is there any kind of significance with the difference? I’ve looked at some papyri and I haven’t seen any of the reversed 3 being used. Another weird thing is that I only see Sigma written C without a tail. What is the difference between uncial, half uncial, and minuscule? I think I’m anal with writing because Chinese is so strict with stroke order and stroke direction, that I apply this kind of writing discipline with writing ancient Greek. Please tell me I’m not anal, if I ask you how to write a rho or a pi. I’m sure there are variations of writing approaches, but I’d at least like to know one of them! So do you write a rho from bottom to top or top to bottom? How about pi? Do you start with the two vertical strokes or the top horizontal stroke first? Actually, I’ve found answers to the rho and pi questions and I think I’ve seen both approaches. But it’d still be fun to know how you guys write Greek. Of the original capital letters (I forgot the correct technical term for it), I couldn’t find out how other people write gamma. Do you start from the top or the bottom? Also upsilon is basically a Y, but I’ve been writing a Y in a bad improvised way since childhood. How do you guys write an upsilon or a Y? Either American education failed me or I was mentally disabled. Hmm... I basically spewed out millions of questions randomly... Great... That is another reason why I limit posting questions each week...

[mingshey]

Don't worry about handwriting. 2000 years later some of the classicists will be busy in 1%homelessography and decipher what you wrote.

[1%homeless]

1%homelessography

HAHAHAHA! I think I really have to change my name ...if that is possible.

[mingshey]

Have you seen these?
http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... php?t=1004
http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... .php?t=980

They are at any rate the capital letters written fast. reversed 3 and C with a bar(or even G, 6 with an extended bar, or C with a tilde in it), all are ways to write E in high speed and flowing manner. For example [face=SPIonic]c[/face] is actually three bars([face=SPIonic]C[/face]) written flowingly. The medieval scribes sometimes mixed a couple of styles (allegedly)according to their convenience. Try to see why a style had become what it is; how the capital letters evolved into that style. Sigma written like C can be a mystery. But look how your hand responds when you try to write [face=SPIonic]S[/face] rapidly.

[1%homeless]

Yup, I've seen them. Yeah, I've been visually analyzing them and I of course see similarities, but couldn't understand why or how, but now I understand a bit. But.... delta is kind of a mystery.... I remember however analyzing capital delta, the stroke started from the top, then down left, then right, the up back to the starting point. Can I assume that is why they write miniscule delta almost in the same stroke maneuver?

I can now see how sigma can be written as C, but the not the circular sigma unless it was evovled from C itself...

[mingshey]

But.... delta is kind of a mystery.... I remember however analyzing capital delta, the stroke started from the top, then down left, then right, the up back to the starting point. Can I assume that is why they write miniscule delta almost in the same stroke maneuver?

Yes, and plus a following stroke to move to the position of next letter?

I can now see how sigma can be written as C, but the not the circular sigma unless it was evovled from C itself...

I once saw a modern greek handwriting of capital sigma, a backward stroke of a short horizontal bar followed by a number 2-like curl. If I ignore the upper part I guess how the circular sigma can be derived. but guess is a guess. For I didn't see the intermediate form. Sigma was wriitten like a runic(angular) S in a period in a place in the history. Thus the final form of sigma. And if the curve is flattened in rapid writing, and there added a following stroke moving to the next letter position, it could explain the middle (circular) form of sigma. (Still, guess is a guess.)

[chad]

yep, i agree with mingshey, the shape of the greek miniscules simply reflects a shorthand for writing the capitals, and as i think i've already suggested earlier, their shapes seem a bit arbitrary if you print them but totally make sense if you running-write them. try writing out the whole alphabet... i only take my pen off the paper 8 times, on gamma, kappa, lambda, twice on pi, tau, chi and psi. you'll notice in particular that the "flow-on" connector provides the first stroke for following letters in e.g. kappa-lambda, lambda-mu, omicron-pi (top stroke), sigma-tau (top stroke), phi-chi, chi-psi (up-stroke). if you do this, you'll also see my letter stroke order. cheers, chad.

[Emma_85]

Well, my handwriting style can only be described as messy . I think it could look quite neat if I spent some time on it, but as I have to scribble the stuff down in a few minutes...
Instead of trying to describe it further, here's a scan:

http://emma.bailey.bei.t-online.de/greekhandwriting.jpg

[annis]

Well, my handwriting style can only be described as messy

Same here: Hesiod.

[annis]

For rho, I start at the bottom and write upward. This is a dangerous manoeuvre with a dip pen, so I can see why starting at the top was probably standard. It certainly accounts for the curious forms it takes in some fonts.

For delta I start with the wee loop at the bottom and then move up. This looks an awful like a handwritten Hebrew lamedh.

My phi is a circle with a seriously long vertical stroke, usually not joined.

The theta is a single stroke as you can see in the picture.

Since I'd already studied Coptic a bit on my own before starting Greek in college, my normal style to emphasize some bit of Greek, sort of my own bold, was to use the Coptic version of Greek. This is an uncial (all-caps, but short) script. I still use it for titles, with the accents floating way above. It also means I never bother attempting an upper-case zig-zag sigma. I always use the "C".

[chad]

on a related topic, after writing out greek exercises in "artificial" font, i.e using lower-case letters, accents, punctuation and spaces between words &c, i write them out again in "proper" greek font, in stoichedon style, i.e all capitals, no spaces, no punctuation, no accents, breaking lines at random places within words (only later did the stoichedon style start breaking lines at syllable boundaries) &c, and then try to read it back naturally. i think if you don't do this as a beginner, you'll never be able to comfortably read the real greek that has come down to us, on inscriptions, papyri &c. how unsatisfying would it be to study greek for years, then go to a real greek document or inscription in greece or a museum and have no idea what it means...

[1%homeless]

Wow, that was cool, it's strangely intimate looking at a scanning of someone's handwriting. I didn't think I would see a scan of someone's handwriting let alone two handwritings. The only handwriting I've seen from textkit people was mingshey's.

Yes I agree with you chad. That is what I plan on doing too.

[katb4now]

Scroll down to the Greek PDF at this site.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/pens/

My handwriting style is based on this pdf, but I make my letters more uniform in size than is suggested.

Rather than trying to be "right", I have attempted to come up with a style that is pleasant to look at, easy to read, quick to write, and consistent from letter to letter in it's style.

It doesn't look good if some of your letters are very loopy and others with razor straight slashes. Just like there are different styles of English handwriting, from very crisp to very stylish, it's the same with Greek.

Develop a style that represents your personality and make sure the letters are in the same style. Mine is kind of loopy and flowing.

My 15 year old son and I laugh that our Greek handwriting is better than our English

[Lex]

I avoid the problem. I do all my Greek "homework" using a word processor, and switch from Arial font to SPIonic whenever I am typing a Greek word. It works well enough, and is sooooo much more readable than my handwriting.

[brians]

Athenaze 2 is much more difficult than volume 1. The stories become more and more difficult to read, and there is much more stuff to remember. Somehow the stories seem artificially filled with "exotic" tenses, irregular verbs, and complex sentence constructions. Stories from Thukydides are not easy to read, and Herodotus at times even seems more difficult than the original (???). I find that my progress was much slower than for volume 1, which took more than a year. Sometimes I had to stop using Athenaze, spend much time on "Readers", and go back to Athenaze. I took two years + with Athenaze 2.

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