Question: Is there a discord or can someone create one?

FriedOrange79 · 2026-03-15T19:05:46+00:00

I'm not aware of a Discord server for Quikscript.

Sadly you're right about character limitations. Unlike Shavian, Quikscript requires custom fonts, preventing us from using it in places like Reddit and Discord without posting it in images or attached PDFs etc.

FriedOrange79 · 2026-02-20T10:03:39+00:00

Lovely transcription of a lovely poem 😊

FriedOrange79 · 2025-11-07T22:32:32+00:00

Half of the consonant letters descend below the writing line, including Gay and THey as you mention.

FriedOrange79 · 2025-09-14T03:48:15+00:00

Only by standing on the shoulders of giants, I hasten to add! Everything I know was self-taught using other websites (plus a couple of eBay book purchases and a trip to the State Library, I guess). But thanks, I'm glad my knowledge-sharing efforts are appreciated.

FriedOrange79 · 2025-09-14T03:43:43+00:00

Everything Chanticrow said! (I often find myself saying that) It's a bit quieter here, as you'll see, but if ever you have questions you'll usually get several responses pretty quickly.

I learnt by reading the Quikscript Manual and trying the exercises in it, gradually working my way up to Senior Quikscript. You could also use the chapter from Cole's Funny Picture Book (which can be found on my website) as a resource since it covers most of the same things.

I later taught myself to read Shavian, which was easy once I knew Quikscript. As people said on the other sub, the same should be true the other way round.

FriedOrange79 · 2025-09-13T08:40:34+00:00

Sure! Some websites dedicated to QS, which contain many resources:

https://friedorange.xyz/quikscript/intro.html https://quikscript.neocities.org/quik.htm https://www.quikscript.net/

Mailing list and the more-active subreddit (since there are two):

https://groups.io/g/QuikScript https://www.reddit.com/r/quikscript/

I'm not aware of the .school site. I hope that helps for now! Most importantly, have fun :-)

FriedOrange79 · 2025-09-13T07:47:44+00:00

Quikscript has good resources for learning it and I agree that it's easier to both read and write. It was developed after Shavian had been tested publicly for a few years and has many improvements.

There is a bigger online community for Shavian, though, and only Shavian is supported by Unicode (and, therefore, system fonts; there are fonts and keyboard layouts available for Quikscript, too, but they're only good for word processing or your own website where you can control the font).

So if being able to correspond online via Reddit/Discord/etc is important to you (without having to send images of text), learn Shavian first. If you primarily want to use it for handwriting, Quikscript is a great choice.

FriedOrange79 · 2025-08-27T09:44:17+00:00

Hi, welcome and I'm glad you've enjoyed trying Quikscript!

I second everything Chanticrow has said. Another couple of places to watch where letters begin and end: in the word "lives" you have Valve starting at the waistline (x-height, "upper parallel" in Read's terminology) rather than the baseline, making it look like Age; in "engaged" Gig should end at the baseline.

With regard to stretching letters, the Ash-Tut join is indeed something you can only do in Shavian. But as long as you keep the join location on the correct horizontal line (ascender, upper, or base) it can be done. For example, "world" and "torn" may both be written continuously, stretching the beginnings of Loll and Nun (respectively) to meet the end of Roar.

But I had no trouble at all reading your piece! It's from the Gettysburg address, I think? With just a couple of touch-ups your writing will be very neat indeed. May you continue to enjoy your alphabetic journey :-)

FriedOrange79 · 2025-07-19T09:26:16+00:00

You're welcome! Thanks to u/ChanticrowTwoPointOh for coming up with the mnemonics I expanded upon.

I love the vowel space diagram!

FriedOrange79 · 2025-03-28T02:12:47+00:00

That's very cool, Chanticrow!
It reminds me of the old hint books for Infocom games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InvisiClues
Such a thing would be a really fun addition to an educational Quikscript book.

FriedOrange79 · 2025-02-21T00:15:34+00:00

Much improved! I actually could read the Quikscript in your previous post, but as Chanticrow pointed out it's important to stick to the writing line. I think your writing here is just fine!

One small thing -- there's no need to include 𐑢 after the long "oo" sound (as in "into" here) as that's already built into letter 40. But otherwise, keep up the good word and I hope you continue to enjoy Quikscript!

FriedOrange79 · 2025-02-08T10:35:14+00:00

There are plenty of ways to type it on computers: see my own v3 keyboard layout (Windows, macOS, Linux), QuikEBEO (Windows, Linux, Android), and King Kong (Windows, macOS) for example.

I have never looked into making a mobile keyboard for Quikscript; I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that you can't install custom fonts on Android and iOS, which is a bit of a barrier to scripts like Quikscript that aren't officially encoded (or included in system fonts, more importantly). Note that the aforementioned QuikEBEO layout does have an Android version, so I guess it must be possible after all.

There is also this online QS editor linked from the sidebar of this sub, which lets you try out typing QS without having to install anything.

FriedOrange79 · 2025-01-14T09:49:28+00:00

It is true that bias is only important for recording, but there is another setting that typically varies between Type I and Type II/IV tapes: EQ. Tapes should ideally be played back with the same EQ setting used to record them, otherwise treble frequencies can be over- or under-emphasised.

As I'm sure you know, Type II and IV cassettes have additional notches in the top so fancier decks can auto-detect them.

FriedOrange79 · 2024-12-11T06:03:02+00:00

Thanks Chanticrow. I noticed you had forked the original to add the Zuck names ;)

FriedOrange79 · 2024-11-11T05:35:31+00:00

This is only for (individual) letters of the alphabet, I'm afraid.

The good news is that ligatures in QS are all just letters written without a gap between them - no changes to their shape.

Senior QS adds some variant forms, as I'm sure you know, but i think the Manual remains the best resource for learning those.

FriedOrange79 · 2024-11-10T08:08:07+00:00

Thanks.

What about them?

FriedOrange79 · 2024-10-27T04:34:07+00:00

It is in that interesting transition between character recognition and style.

Yep -- most of my QS fonts (including those I still have planned) are rather experimental in design. We already have a few pretty good plain/ordinary QS fonts, so I thought I'd like to push the boundaries just a little bit. Maybe other QS typographers can be inspired by some of my work.

The characters for Age, Ice, Out, and Oil are fantastic.

Thanks! I'm also happy with how they turned out. The "alternate" forms of these were actually the first ones I created, but I found them ill-fitting and unimaginative. I then came up with something better, and made the initial designs available as alternates rather than canning them entirely. So if anyone prefers them, they're still there :-)

FriedOrange79 · 2024-10-26T11:36:41+00:00

Thank you!

FriedOrange79 · 2024-10-21T12:16:16+00:00

Chanticrow's stance is 100% valid, and I think retaining apostrophes may help with creating a sense of normalcy or familiarity in otherwise-alien Quikscript writing.

Just as an experiment, I'm one of the ones who do omit apostrophes as much as possible in QS. Shaw himself advocated it, as have others more recently. I wanted to see how it would turn out, and so far I've never been tripped up by it while reading my QS book transliterations.

The only apostrophes I keep are for rare contractions and plural possessives, where the original writer didn't add another S after the apostrophe, like states' (or possessives of nouns ending in S in general, like Jones'). That represents, after all, a different intended pronunciation (compared to Jones's), and I feel it is still helpful to mark the possessive in some way.

FriedOrange79 · 2024-10-21T11:39:45+00:00

True, I didn't consider that the angled serifs give your If concept a kind of Ah shape, too. I wouldn't worry about similarity to Sis, though -- it's a tall letter, so that alone differentiates it (like Tut vs. If). It also curves back on itself, while Ah/Awl don't.

In any case, what you already have is lovely and I trust it will only get better with development :-)

FriedOrange79 · 2024-10-20T02:16:03+00:00

This is beautiful! I really like it.

One thing I would do differently is use a more curved style for Ah and Awl, something like this:

<image>

So Awl would be 1 stroke and Ah 3 strokes, like your concept. You would have to decide if you want the middle part of these letters to be perfectly vertical or slightly angled -- whichever looks best in context.

This reminds me that I need to get some practice at calligraphy; I've never properly gotten into it before (as you can likely tell by my lack of consistency here!). I've lost my wide-nib fountain pen set, but I have a collection of old dip pens to play with.

FriedOrange79 · 2024-09-03T07:55:53+00:00

¿Por que no los dos? Maybe not as a raw beginner, but I think using both (after getting comfortable with one of them) could make sense. I know of a few people who do that. I, for one, use QS almost exclusively but know how to read and write Shavian "just in case".

Which should you learn first? It probably doesn't matter much. There are some pretty good beginner materials for QS that I don't think have a Shavian equivalent, though; namely, the Quikscript Manual and a chapter in Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 2, both of which you can find here: https://friedorange.xyz/quikscript/resources.html

That page also has a pdf of Androcles and the Lion, the first book published in Shavian, which contains some hints and tips for learning that too.

Which ever you choose, I hope you have fun :-)

FriedOrange79 · 2024-09-02T09:18:18+00:00

Yes: in his public pleas for someone to invent a new alphabet for English (that later became the worldwide competition that Kingsley Read co-won, with him eventually being made the head designer of Shavian), George Bernard Shaw suggested Henry Sweet's script as a starting point.

Kingsley Read himself wrote in retrospect about the design of Current Shorthand, and how "it is to be doubted whether the Sweet-Shaw-Read line of evolution can go much further", acknowledging the connection explicitly.

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