STRUCTURE continued...

Evolution
SN is still in use. One of its major advantages is that it is computer friendly, due partly to its use of standard keyboard symbols, but also partly to its basic organization. Its treatment of each parameter separately lends itself well to manipulation in databases, something very important to research. The Edinburgh Non-Manual Coding System is an adaptation of SN to show NMGS (Miller 198), a translator project is at https://s-leodm.unm.edu/signsynth/
and I am sure there are many other innovations. SN has gone in many different directions, yet no one has ever promoted it as a popular script. Stokoe himself states that "theory suggests" sign language cannot be written (Stokoe 1987, 118), and even in DASL he wrote that "only carefully made motion picture studies or observation of actual signing can give an adequate idea of the nature of [Movement]" (xiv). This attitude persists. "Despite almost forty years of the best efforts of linguists and others, those who write about American Sign Language still generally use pictographs to represent the signs they discuss. Because of the extreme complexity of the sublexical structuring of ASL (in four dimensions), reducing it to the two dimensions of phonetic writing may prove more trouble than it is worth" (Armstrong 99). It's almost embarrassing to point out that their favored pictographs are in two dimensions. As long as their theory won't allow them to view such writing as phonetic, these writers are at a dead end.

By contrast, SSW is actively supported by a dedicated community of users. By now there are many such communities throughout the world, using SSW for many different languages, and each area is developing their own orthographies. The Danes have dropped the symbol for Contact, in keeping with the normal trend toward a more phonemic, less phonetic script (Sutton, 25 Jun 99). Nicaraguan Sign Language now underlines all proper names (Kegl, 2 Nov 98). There are other examples, and new ones arise constantly as SSW adapts to the needs of varied signing communities. A growing body of literature is being produced, including an ongoing Bible translation available on-line at:

A recent change, unique in the history of writing, has been the switch to writing in vertical columns instead of horizontally. This aids in showing some grammatical constructions in ASL, such as comparisons: