Hanging from the headline or sitting on the baseline?
The Gujarati script has derived a lot of its characters, script features and writing style from the Devanagari script. However, there is one big differentiating feature between the two- the Shiro Rekha or the horizontal headline bar that is present in the Devanagari writing style and missing from the Gujarati script.
During my critical thinking week under my mentor, Shuchita’s guidance, I was trying to get more acquainted with the script and its writing styles. This was because I had lost my fluency in reading and wiring Gujarati.
During my childhood, I had my grandmother encouraging and pushing me to read the Gujarati newspapers that came at home. She always believed in making her grandchildren literate in the native language and script. This was the only time I had been exposed to reading Gujarati on a daily basis. However, unfortunately, after growing up and moving away from home, I lost touch with the script. Hence, before I dived into designing for the script, I had to reconnect with my learnings from my childhood and pick up reading and writing Gujarati.
I was trying to look at different visuals of the script online. Just to get more variety of visual references, I asked my mom to send me pictures of handwritten texts of different people (preferably of native speakers or someone from my family who wrote in Gujarati quite often). She sent me the following three images:
Image 1: My maternal grandmother’s handwriting, Image 2: My aunt's handwriting, Image 3: My maternal grandfather's handwriting
QUICK OBSERVATIONS:
On the first look of these images, one of my first observations was that all three of the writers have not incorporated the ‘foot’ or the ‘vanak’ (Gujarati term) at the end of the vertical stems. My mom told me that when one writes by hand in Gujarati, to maintain the speed, it is natural to not incorporate the vanak. The vanak is usually present in Calligraphic scripts. This made sense to an extent keeping in mind the wiring speed.
My next observation was that two of the writers had written the words sitting on the baseline line whileone out of the three had the letters hanging from the toppling (just like Devanagari letters would’ve been with a shirorekha). Upon a discussion with my mom on this , she told me that the correct and the most common way to write is to have the letters hanging from the topline just like Devanagari writing style. Hmm, but why?
Is it a super random thought to understand why the Gujarati letters would be hanging from the topline and not sitting on the bottom line, given that the Gujarati doesn’t have a ShiroRekha (the horizontal headline bar)?
Why do the Gujarati letters hang from the topline when they don’t have a horizontal bar on the top ends of the letters? Why isn’t writing Gujarati letters resting on the bottomline more common? Is it because the Gujarati script is derived so heavily from Devanagari script?
I believe there is no correct answer to this and I am not even sure how helpful and valuable this insight was or can be but it was definitely something new that I learned. So, well.
Screenshot from Devanagari Type Anantomy by Pooja Saxena.
This train of thought further led to another related topic which was regarding the anatomy of Gujarati type. During my research week, my mentor sent me references to established work done in different Indic scripts, especially Devenagari. One such example is Devanagari Type Anatomy by Pooja Saxena.
However, there is nothing specifically that I have found so far for Gujarati type anatomy systems. I was wondering if there is a Gujarati type anatomy done specifically for the script that does not borrow from Devanagari type anatomy as much because they are two different scripts - so they kind of deserve two different anatomy systems.
If anyone reading this article and has any references or sources regarding anatomy of Gujarati type, please share with me in the comments or on email. Thank you :)
