Scriptio continua

Scriptio continua ("Continuous script" in Latin) is a style of writing without spaces between words or sentences, with all the text in capital letters, and with no punctuation. In the West, from the first extant Greek texts, until around 1000 AD, alphabetical texts were written without spaces between words, and in the earlier periods in all upper-case. It is still in use in Thai, other Southeast Asian abugidas, and in languages that use Chinese characters (Chinese and Japanese) though with sentence breaks. Modern Chinese differs from ancient "scriptio continua" in that it does at least use punctuation, although this was borrowed from the West only about a century ago. Before this, the only forms of punctuation found in Chinese writings were punctuations to denote quotes, proper nouns, and emphasis.

Before the advent of the codex (book), Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls. Reading continuous script on a scroll was more akin to reading a musical score than reading text. The reader would typically already have memorized the text through an instructor, had memorized where the breaks were, and the reader almost always read aloud, usually to an audience in a kind of reading performance, using the text as a cue sheet. Organizing the text to make it more rapidly ingested (through punctuation) was not needed and eventually the current system of rapid silent reading for information replaced the older slower performance declaimed aloud for dramatic effect. [Richard A. Lanham (2006). "The Economics of Attention". ISBN 0-226-46882-8. page 113-115]

Examples

Latin text

Latin text in "scriptio continua" (From Cicero's "De finibus bonorum et malorum"):

*NEQVEPORROQVISQVAMESTQVIDOLOREMIPSVMQVIADOLORSITAMETCONSECTETVRADIPISCIVELIT

Which in modern punctuation is:

*"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci uelit…"
*‘Nobody likes pain for its own sake, or looks for it and wants to have it, just because it is pain…’

Modern English

"Spring and Fall" (1880) by Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered in "scriptio continua" (20 characters per line):

MARGARETAREYOUGRIEVI NGOVERGOLDENGROVEUNL EAVINGLEAVESLIKETHET HINGSOFMANYOUWITHYOU RFRESHTHOUGHTSCAREFO RCANYOUAHASTHEHEARTG ROWSOLDERITWILLCOMET OSUCHSIGHTSCOLDERBYA NDBYNORSPAREASIGHTHO UGHWORLDSOFWANWOODLE AFMEALLIEANDYETYOUWI LLWEEPANDKNOWWHYNOWN OMATTERCHILDTHENAMES ORROWSSPRINGSARETHES AMENORMOUTHHADNONORM INDEXPRESSEDWHATHEAR THEARDOFGHOSTSGUESSE DITISTHEBLIGHTMANWAS BORNFORITISMARGARETY OUMOURNFOR

"Spring and Fall" (1880) by Gerard Manley Hopkins rendered in normal punctuation:

:Margaret, are you grieving:Over Goldengrove unleaving?:Leaves, like the things of man, you:With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?:Ah! as the heart grows older:It will come to such sights colder:By and by, nor spare a sigh:Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;:And yet you will weep and know why.:Now no matter, child, the name::Sorrow's springs are the same.:Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed:What heart heard of, ghosts guessed::It is the blight man was born for,:It is Margaret you mourn for.

Chinese language

Here is an example of a normal Chinese sentence, then what it would look like with spaces between words, then a pinyin transcription (in which words are normally divided), and finally an English translation:
*北京在中国北方；广州在中国南方。
*北京 在 中国 北方； 广州 在 中国 南方。
*Unicode|Běijīng zài Zhōngguó běifāng; Guǎngzhōu zài Zhōngguó nánfāng.
*Beijing is in Northern China; Guangzhou is in Southern China.

References

See also

* Boustrophedon
* Codex Sinaiticus