Writing In ASL - Blog Posts

Yes this. Because ASL is a full language, but not the one being used to tell the story, only the meaning rather than the form is kept.

However, I think Sara Novik's way of showing ASL dialogue in True Biz is cool and represents how space is used in ASL. I don't have the book so I can't post a picture but I wrote about it for a paper.

[Image ID: Screenshot of an essay. the paragraphs each have their own column. The first on the left, the second on the right, and the third in the middle.

The POV characters dialogue was in one area of the page,

And the other characters dialogue was in a different area.

If there were multiple characters in a conversation they would get their own space as they entered the conversation.

End ID]

Something I get mildly annoyed about in writing (mostly in fanfics, since I haven’t encountered a published book with this), is when sign language is depicted identical to speaking. Like, commas, contractions, stuttering, etc.

When I was taught ASL in high school, we were told there was a way to write down sign, but it’s not like how you’d write a spoken English sentence. Words are typically in all caps, lack any -ing/-ed, and have a different grammatical structure.

For example: “I went to school today” would be made into something like “TODAY SCHOOL I GO TO”

Obviously, I’m not someone who’s remotely fluent in ASL, and high school classes do not give me the right to winge and criticize on behalf of those who do speak it. I just found it odd that I’ve never seen Glossing used at all in writing, and it bugged me that signs were used essentially like spoken dialogue (how does one stutter in sign language?), when there’s a uniqueness to the language that gets erased in the process.