ASLWrite Fan

First, slwrite.org: This is your bread and butter. This is where a dictionary is being rebuilt. This is where you can get feedback from long term users and ask questions. You have to join the platform but its free and the underlying service provider isn't tied to a social media giant. https://slwrite.org/

Second, my Chirp: This is where you can find the different accounts I'm posting on. Since one of my goals is to produce, preserve and introduce people to ASLWrite/SLWrite given facebook's damage to ASLWrite history and materials, my goal is to reliably but not spammily, post across different social media in hopes that something will survive a given platform extinguishment and that others might find it, learn it, practice it, and do a thang themselves. https://chirp.me/ASLwriteFan

Third, Bee Olive's ASLWrite type font (v1.7): If you spend some time learning this, you can LITERALLY use it to type ASLWrite. It creates some restraints over freestyling it, and sometimes requires creativity to get everything placed, but if you work on using it the constraints and set pieces themselves might give you a leg up on keeping in mind all the moving parts until your brain absorbs them (especially since you'll need to reference the PDF frequently, which is a sort of inadvertant studying, but with applied practice) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ggp-2Tnzdy8jOpicos-PMFQqcV8pK2H2?fbclid=IwY2xjawOZl9RleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEensFQD-CJP6_JalYfcDReg35n364zhSMk1Hf4g_QmNYDitzVRV9d6hxCUVLo_aem_vfCEy-BE0ry2SeFKLCYu7g

Fourth, ASLWrite.com: This is a parking page that used to hold the ASLWrite materials. It was changed to a landing page that directed to Facebook and has not been updated (as of this writing, but might be as of your reading) to the slwrite.org group, but it might be in the future, so its good to keep bookmarked. http://www.aslwrite.com/

Fifth, the ASLWrite Facebook groups (ASLWrite; ASLWrite Words): These were the spaces a lot of work was done in and you can still find discussions and words there even though the groups are paused and the super admins work was erased by fb.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/434728996688075/https://www.facebook.com/groups/186676851893933 Sixth, a hand speak dictionary entry w/ ASLWrite at the end: (put a brief explanation and handspeak example here) https://www.handspeak.com/word/1765/

Seventh, an unexplained list of all of the links on my Chirp as a back up if Chirp goes down (I'm also thinking about making a link tree):

Happy pi day image with signing variant on pi and day courtesy of Minnie B, 2026 in BeeOlive V.1.7

Go to slwrite.org to see how MB describes their process, the signs they used, and if they've made any changes since this post date.

https://slwrite.org/t/ASL%20Writing%20Feedback/b5c689df-636e-44f4-9ee2-82fab1376304

There are a lot of great websites, like lifeprint (run by Bill Vicars, an icon in Teaching ASL) or ASLcore (which I just discovered and omg I'm geeking out over).

But one of my favorite is handspeak. You'll probably see a lot of links or references here, and its because there are always goodies on the site. Jolanta Lapiak, the person who runs it has at least a decades worth of material (I think, don't hold me to the time estimate). There's everything from a dictionary to articles and videos on childhood language development.

Today's goodie is an article on the history of sign language writing which breaks some things down, and it also has a graphic by Adrean Clark, which I find fascinating (I don't know what year it was put out, but I'll keep hunting and label it if I can)

I love pouring over these evolutions and comparisons. We're really looking at history, in both the graphic and the site, that should be preserved for years down the line.

Maker: Adrean Clark of ASLwrite.com; Source: Handspeak

Today's post is about Mark Dienh, a former contributer to the facebook group and how amazing his work has been.

Mark spent a lot of time studying the ASLWrite system and then began posting in the group asking for feedback. He had a strong foundation and took feedback enthusiastically, including source videos etc.

I wish I could spend time elaborating on all of the various signs he shared and how they influenced my own practice (and others) but I'd never get this post out.

This video highlights you don't need to know Vietnamese sign language to be able to see how the signs are expressed by the orthography,

It might feel odd to think of Vietnamese sign language being written in ASLWrite, but it really highlights why calling it all SLWrite is a healthy change. Marks work is a foundational example (though of course not the only one). I'd love to move a copy of his videos over here because facebook could easily eat them and that would be a loss for the archives, but I'd like to reach out to him first. Unfortunately a lot of people have ditched facebook so its getting challenging to do.

Happy pi day Image courtesy of Minnie B, 2026 in BeeOlive V.1.7 Go to slwrite.org to see how MB describes their process, the signs they used, and if they've made any changes since this post date.

https://slwrite.org/t/ASL%20Writing%20Feedback/519af5b9-eeb7-4040-b1cd-54df4e9d1fd3

Last month I shared the link to this experiment, which I posted on Cara first.

As part of my preservation efforts, I would like things to reside on more than one server, not just have links shared on more than one server. So, even though you might have seen the previous post, here it is again.

(I copied and pasted from Cara, which I think compresses it a bit to protect artists, so its not the highest quality. I don't want to struggle to figure out how to upload it here.

Here was my commentary:

This piece explores how to write the ASL sign "MEAN" (as in "to mean" or "meaning" using the ASLWrite script. One experiment is in a pink box with a blue lining and one is in a yellow circle with a green lining. They share all of the same components except one extra edge line. The upright B hand shows the left hand in the word MEAN, the upright edgeline shows that the B hand sits on the edge of its palm. The sideways V hand shows the right hand in the word mean, the thumb angle indicates the hand faces away from the signer. The circle at the base of the V indicates the wrist twists. The ASLWrite version in pink, on the left, only has a vertical edgeline for the B hand. The ASLWrite version in yellow on the right has an additional edgeline underneath the V hand that would indicate the V sites on the edge of the hand with the thumb. The fundamental question is, do we need the second edgeline (I feel confident we need the first). Can we read this sign correctly without the second edgeline so it isn't confused with another sign, given that the goal is a script that can be written with ease, with the idea of picking up the pencil as few times as possible. I feel like for full legibility the answer is yes to the second edgeline, but those who have more experience might feel no, its self-explanatory. This graphic ponders this question. Take proposed signs with potential and a grain of salt. People are welcome to take this graphic into the slwrite.org group and ask the group for its thoughts, or to reproduce the signs and take those reproductions into the group.

Ok, so this is actually just using the ASLWrite fingerspelling alphabet, not ASL itself, but its out there and I found it, and good god I'm loving finding it everywhere in the nooks and crannies, like glitter after a party or sand after a good day at the beach. But better because its not gritty and not working its way up my underwear.

I'm trying to work on posting my first all ASLWrite story on Ao3 (tangentially based on the restaurant at the end of the universe), and I'm stymed by the sign robot. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to write the word robot.

Its killing me.

Now to be fair, I haven't actually downloaded it, I need to make an account, so I can't verify its useful. But I found it, so here it is!

In the six drafts waiting, three of them have 5 or more subdrafts, and of one of those there are 12 solid subdraft ideas that just need greater expansion. This is the result of working hard to go through information to save it and archive it and then writing a draft or writing a subdraft with the ideas as I come across them.

I'd like to do future articles comparing the various ways people write things like "I" or "name" and why each one might be preferred but right now I'm drowning in drafts and not enough completion so I'll leave the link and maybe circle around later.

I put my first experiment with a sign, all gussied up to be pretty, on Cara, an anti-ai, volunteer social media platform for artists (and artists is construed broadly)

Joined pagebound, not because I can do anything with ASLWrite with it, but because I wanted to.

Reading is a blessing and I'm not always able to, so I need to be intentional about nurturing my fiction reading time. Maybe this will help?

I have to be careful though. When I feel pressured to read, then I don’t want to read. I need to keep it leisurely. (I say this because they have something cool called Quests, and I need to keep my hungry little mitts out of that or it could backfire spectacularly)

Maybe one day I'll write a novella or a poetry book in ASLWrite and see it published and see in on here! Like 10 years in the future, but I can look forward to it, even if its a decade away

Right now I'm working on a couple of drafts (two of them are queued, but that' because they're done well enough that if I don't get them polished by march or april they might as well be dropped then).

One is on the word year, one is on the word hope, and one is on the book of ruth (all ASLWrite related).

One of those drafts I'm excited about is this one giving screenshots of what to expect in the slwrite.org group (redacted of member information).

(The math isn't mathing so that final draft is just a dead draft that I keep as a to do list for myself)

Its going to take me while, as you can see by the fact that I started the draft on January 12 and its January 23rd right now.