International Movement Writing Alphabet
Encyclopedia
The International Movement Writing Alphabet (the IMWA) is an ordered set of symbols used to record movement, developed by Valerie Sutton
. It was originally designated Suttons's Sign Symbol Sequence. The IMWA is used in MovementWriting which consists of five subdivisions:
number that contains information about the category, group, symbol, variation, fill, and rotation. Each part of the ID number uses 2 digits, except for the symbol part which uses 3. Dashes are placed between the parts to produce the SSS ID number. Ex: 01-01-001-01-01-01
There are 8 categories: hand, movement, face, head, upper body, full body, space, and punctuation.
There are 40 groups. The keyboard design and symbol palete are based on the 40 groups.
Valerie Sutton
Valerie Sutton is a developer of movement notation and a former dancer.She was born in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City, the daughter of a physicist father and a poet/model mother...
. It was originally designated Suttons's Sign Symbol Sequence. The IMWA is used in MovementWriting which consists of five subdivisions:
- SignWritingSignWritingSignWriting is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that...
, for writing the movements of Sign Languages, - DanceWritingDanceWritingDanceWriting is a form of dance notation. Developed in 1972 by Valerie Sutton, it is part of a greater body of work called MovementWriting or the International Movement-Writing Alphabet....
, for writing dance choreography, - MimeWriting, for writing classic mime,
- SportsWriting, for writing ice skating and gymnastics routines, and
- MovementWriting, for writing all gesture.
SSS ID Numbering
The IMWA currently has over 27,000 symbols. Each symbol in the IMWA uses a unique IdentificationIdentification (information)
The function of identification is to map a known quantity to an unknown entity so as to make it known. The known quantity is called the identifier and the unknown entity is what needs identification. A basic requirement for identification is that the Id be unique. Ids may be scoped, that is, they...
number that contains information about the category, group, symbol, variation, fill, and rotation. Each part of the ID number uses 2 digits, except for the symbol part which uses 3. Dashes are placed between the parts to produce the SSS ID number. Ex: 01-01-001-01-01-01
There are 8 categories: hand, movement, face, head, upper body, full body, space, and punctuation.
There are 40 groups. The keyboard design and symbol palete are based on the 40 groups.
SignBank
SignBank is a FileMaker database. It is used to create and print dictionaries sorted by Sign Symbol Sequence, rather than just spoken language.SignPuddle
SignPuddle is an online sign language dictionary that uses the IMWA to create signs using drag and drop. The content of the online dictionaries is community supported. Currently there are over 38 sign languages respesented with each language having anywhere from a few signs to several thousand.SSS-95
The SSS-95 was the first computerized symbol set for SignWriting. It was designed for use with the original SignWriter Dos, written in Pascal. It was very limited in size due to memory constraints.SSS-99
The SSS-99 was a revamped version of the Sign Symbol Sequence created to work with SignWriter Java. It featured additional symbols and more detailed graphics.SSS-2002
The SSS-2002 was the first Sign Symbol Sequence to use the current SSS ID numbering. It was in SignEdit.SSS-2004
The SSS-2004 was the final version of Sutton's Sign Symbol Sequence, with over 20 thousand symbols. It was renamed the International Movement Writing Alphabet to recognize the achievement that it was now possible to use this symbol set to write more than just sign language. The IMWA has been called the SSS-IMWA.See also
- Valerie SuttonValerie SuttonValerie Sutton is a developer of movement notation and a former dancer.She was born in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City, the daughter of a physicist father and a poet/model mother...
- SignWritingSignWritingSignWriting is a system of writing sign languages. It is highly featural and visually iconic, both in the shapes of the characters, which are abstract pictures of the hands, face, and body, and in their spatial arrangement on the page, which does not follow a sequential order like the letters that...
- DanceWritingDanceWritingDanceWriting is a form of dance notation. Developed in 1972 by Valerie Sutton, it is part of a greater body of work called MovementWriting or the International Movement-Writing Alphabet....
- movement notation
- sign languageSign languageA sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
- Notation (disambiguation)