Pantographia
Encyclopedia
Writing system
A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.-General properties:Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to...
s and typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
by Edmund Fry
Edmund Fry
-Early life:Fry was the son of Joseph Fry, and member of the Bristol Fry family, born at Bristol. He studied medicine; took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh, and spent some time at St. George's Hospital, London.-Fry & Co.:...
, one of the most learned of the English typefounders of his day.
Fry provided a description of each alphabet on the right-handed pages with a specimen of the full range of the alphabet on the left. Fry spent sixteen years researching the book, which contains more than 200 specimens; writing systems from Abyssinia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, including 20 varieties of Chaldean
Chaldean Christians
Chaldean Christians are ethnic Assyrian adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church, most of whom entered communion with the Catholic Church from the Church of the East, which was already Catholic, but most wanted to stray away from the Catholic Church, causing the split in the 17th and 18th...
, 39 of the Greek
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
, 8 Egyptian, 11 Hebrew, 7 Irish, 6 Malayan, 7 Persian, 7 Phoenician
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
, 7 Samaritan, one Tibetan, and 2 Welsh.