Written ASL/History

Until William Stokoe's notation in the 1960s, notation for ASL signs was never systematically attempted. Since then, several systems have emerged, but most are not widely used outside of a single organization or individual. In the past few years, three systems (SignWriting, ASLwrite, and si5s) have emerged to prominence.

Stokoe

Stokoe Notation was developed in the 1960s for the DASL.

SignWriting

SignWriting was devolped in 1974 by Valerie Sutton, a dancer who had developed DanceWriting two years earlier. SignWriting is used in over 40 countries and is also used for the ASL version of Wikipedia.

ASLwrite and si5s

The si5s writing system was developed by Robert Arnold in collaboration with others, and first released at the Deaf Nation World Expo in 2010. The system was well-received, selling textbooks across the US and being taught at Gallaudet. In 2011, an ASLwrite website was established to promote early Si5s and begin writing a dictionary. Later, Robert Arnold decided to pursue a private path for Si5s with ASLized, and also reformed the si5s system, reducing the number of written digits by adding diacritics which are combined with base digits to make complex digits. At this point, the “early Si5s” tree had effectively split into two branches: the official si5s with a new digibet, and the writing of the ASLwrite community, which has has become open-soure and evolved as well, changing many digits and replacing the "reserved" symbols with phonemic writing.