Structural Analysis of Practical Gujarati Calligraphy

The focus of this talk will be on the structure of Gujarati calligraphy. The Gujarati is one of the official and local languages of India. The state of Gujarat is located on the West side of India. This script was used in writing accounts by traditional accountants (Munim), so they used to write very fast and with all connected letters without lifting of the pen. The Gujarati calligraphy has distinct strokes to form the letter like vertical stroke, horizontal stroke, curved stroke, circle, ellipse, loop, knot, point, etc. This script has a 3-tire system. The top part is for Matras, the Middle part is for the Consonant or vowels and the bottom is for the Harswa sign. Another interesting formal aspect of the Gujarati script is conjunct form. These joint letters help to make the writing of Gujarati very compact. The compactness of such joint letter-forms makes the pronunciation perfect and precise and any trained reader or speaker will never commit an error in pronunciation of recognition. From this talk one can learn about the structure of the Gujarati calligraphy letterforms, the influence of the writing method on structure, construction of letterforms through structure and system of writing.