I wanted to call this my roman type theory, but it’s just more of an observation of an interesting pattern. maybe after you read this, you’ll look at the alphabet differently, especially if you’re looking at the alphabet with something obstructing your view of most of it….
what is meant here by the roman alphabet is the characters used to represent the English language to English readers. if you are not familiar with this alphabet, you probably have not made it this far.
it is easiest to illustrate this observation step by step:
- consider only the top and bottom portions of the alphabet. write out the alphabet in order with these portions highlighted (brown), using a different color (red) for the 1st instance of each distinct top or bottom.
- remove each letter not containing the 1st instance of a top or bottom.
- remove the middles of the letters and subsequent instances of tops and bottoms.
- condense the remaining tops and bottoms by shifting leftward.
- this is where the pattern becomes more obvious. there are only 6 distinct tops and bottoms in the roman alphabet. they are described below in the illustration as:
- single point
- line / curve
- curve
- line
- double point
- triple point
- the order in which these 6 tops and bottoms appear is illustrated below (and could also be 1/5 2 3 4 5/1 6, depending on how you look at it).
in conclusion, not only are there only 6 distinct tops and bottoms, but the order in which they appear creates this interesting pattern. these numbers or shapes could be used to represent the alphabet as a whole.