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Sutton SignWriting

Sutton SignWriting

Valery Sutton, an American woman, first became a dancer, then a dance teacher. In order to facilitate the process of teaching, she invented a system of signs, which stood for physical actions and movements. Next, she adapted it for a gesture script so that deaf people could communicate with the world.

Let's take a closer look at the symbols. They represent pictograms (small drawings) with the information about the fingers' position, palm's orientation in relation to body; various movements, touches, and facial expressions. All these elements come together and build up a separate gesture, a communicative item, which, as a rule, depicts some word and meaning. As you can see, this block is huge — there are lots of symbols, because very often one gesture can be written in different ways.

Currently the script is not standardized for any language.

Sutton signwriting is designed for writing vertically. The gestures are shown from the point of the speaker, not their interlocutor. The right arm is supposed to dominate. Although, if there is no standard version, you can write however you want.

The block contains punctuation marks, which include brackets and rotation modifiers.

Properties

Range	1D800–1DAAF
Characters	688

List of Characters

Table of Characters

1D400–1D7FF Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols 1DF00–1DFFF Latin Extended-G

0: Basic Multilingual Plane

1: Supplementary Multilingual Plane

2: Supplementary Ideographic Plane

3: Tertiary Ideographic Plane

4-13: Not Used

14: Supplementary Special-purpose Plane

15: Supplementary Private Use Area Plane – A

16: Supplementary Private Use Area Plane – B

Sutton SignWriting

Properties

List of Characters

Hand shapes with index finger

Hand shapes with index and middle fingers

Hand shapes with index and middle fingers and thumb

Hand shapes with four fingers

Hand shapes with five fingers

Hand shapes with little finger

Hand shapes with ring finger

Hand shapes with middle finger

Hand shapes with index finger and thumb

Hand shapes with thumb

Contact movement indicators

Finger movement indicators

Movement indicators

Dynamics indicators

Head shapes

Body shapes

Location bases

Punctuation

Fill modifiers

Rotation modifiers