All the EL bases


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Please click here: All the EL Bases,
and print out the table to refer to it in the following sections.

In the chart:
The frame of each base is to show the proportion and the location of the base shape clearly.
The number of each base is for another identification, as well as the ASCII.
The main image of each bases is set through the shape as a simplified picture or depending on human's common feeling. Each base page of The Dictionary tells why it was set like its shape.

The amount of the bases

There are 91in total, including ideograms, grammatical symbols, phonetics, numerals, mathematical notations, and brackets to manage information. EL has many more functions than current Standard English keyboards have with about the same/less amount of notations. 
In Japanese, usually an adult uses more than 2000 KANJI ideograms on the daily life besides two different types of KANA (syllablics). The  Chinese use more characters. Charles Ogden translated some issues of the New York Times into Basic English using only 850 words. The way was uncomfortable to use, but at least he proved that it was possible to express a complicated subject with a limited amount of basic vocabulary.
My plan of the EL system is not too rigid at all for both phonetics and ideograms with this small amount of bases. How can that be? It is by tricks of the nature of visual symbols. You'll find about it later.

The shape of base

Usually a traditional letter/ideogram system has similar patterns of shape, according to the method and the material to write the original letters, and what it represents in their history and cultural background.
Each of them has been perfected over time and has a well balanced, beautifully shaped as a mass.
The uniqueness of EL
(1) As you see, EL bases has various kinds of geometrical shapes, including a dot, a straight line, a circle, an arc, or the combination of these shapes, in various sizes

(2) The bases include two to four similar shapes as , , , , and , .
This relates to that nature has many pairs of things. Also the trick works for keeping the base rule consistent and to ease in memorization, sharing a key of the computer keyboard between a similar shaped pair of bases.

(3) All the bases/notations except "gf" (an additional mark) are set in each particular location of the  same size square frame; and you must memorize not only each shape but  also its location in the frame. Although you need not to draw the frame.

The reasons of them are for easiness to recognize the shapes and to maintain the clear rule of the notations; also relate to the trick for increasing symbols.

* For hand-writings, of course you can arrange the bases more naturally and not very geometrically,  but don't forget about each location in the frame; you will know why later.
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(c)1997 Yoshiko McFarland