Letters with Alternative Basic Shapes

Abstract

In many written languages there are letters each of which may be embodied by marks having more than one basic shape. For each occurence of such a letter, the shape of the mark used to embody it is normally selected according to the circumstances in which the letter occurs. Thus, some alternative basic shapes are appropriate to certain places in a word or another part of a text; some are used by different dialects; some belong to different co-scripts (subdivisions of a script that each have basic shapes for all of its letters); some are used by certain typefaces or styles of handwriting. This paper discusses these several kinds of variation among basic shapes, and gives examples from several scripts.