Carving on wood vs carving on stone.
(I don't know which forum this post should actually be on. Probably not "general", but I couldn't make up my mind.) What do you know about natscripts (or about conscripts, especially your own) that are used primarily for carving on stone? What about carving on wood? Isn't it much likelier that a script would be used mostly for carving on wood than on stone? How would the fact that a script was carved in wood affect its appearance? Would the "grain" of the wood mean that certain angles wouldn't be common? Would curvilinear pieces of characters be rarer than for some other scripts? If a script is carved on stone, how does that affect its appearance? For instance, is it likelier to be a right-to-left script if it's carved in stone? I theorize that, if its carved in stone, curved lines are likely to be difficult and hence rare, but there is no restriction on which angles are easy and which are difficult, as there would be if it were carved on wood. Responses? Other ideas?

I think it would generally lead to a script with mostly straight lines, probably no curvy features. A runic-type script would be the easiest kind to make on wood, in my opinion.

An example of Hanzi carved (actually inlayed) in wood. Arabic carved onto a headstone. Now, I'm not familiar with stone or wood carving, but I've seen plenty of examples of almost every type of writing system. As far as types of stone/wood, I think that is a pointless question, as one being able to carve in one type, in all likelyhood, one would be able to carve into any type. And as far as the type of script, I think my two examples demonstrate the mild irrelevance of that question as well.

Here's some other scripts for comparison: Wood: Ojibwe Birch Bark Rongorongo script Stone: Angkorian Khmer Rosetta Stone Mayan glyphs Cham writing Runic inscription Orkhon Brahmi pillar Egyptian Hyeroglyphs Greek/Aramaic inscriptions Linear B tablet Cypriot tablet Iron: Seal script (Chinese) Bronzeware: Bronzeware script (Chinese) Bone: Oracle script (Chinese) More...

Indeed, although I'd be more willing to think that the tool used to write has more impact on the style of writing than the medium itself. Consider how SE Asian languages tend to have rounded scripts because they were written on palm leaves, which were known to rip if the writing was square or jagged. Yet, if you used a permanent marker on a palm leaf, you'd probably not encounter the same problems as the SE Asians. - Or compare Chinese calligraphy to Western calligraphy, where you can easily notice how the brush stroke (weight) and angle are more important in Chinese calligraphy than in Western calligraphy, considering that (ink) brushes can more easily achieve this goal than a quill.

(BTW Hakaku; Thanks for the examples! They're great.) Quite enough evidence that types of wood/stone and types of scripts are not of as much importance as one might think.I don't know. There's not that much shown carved on wood. And all of it seems to show that straight lines are preferred when carving, though curved lines are not forbidden; more characters in most of the samples that are carved rather than cast, consist of all straight lines, than consist largely of curved lines. I had suggested that characters carved on wood would be even less likely to make use of curves than those carved on stone; and that the choice of angle would be quite free on stone but more restricted on wood (not that the dispreferred angles would never occur, but that more characters wouldn't have them than would be dominated by them.) But all of that may really depend on the instrument used as much as the medium it's used on, as Hakaku says.

I'm fairly comfortable making the assertion that with the correct tools, almost any style of script can be written on almost every type of material...except for maybe Jello.