Scriptio continua

Scriptio continua (Latin for "continuous script"), also known as scriptura continua or scripta continua, is a style of writing without spaces, or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation, diacriticals, or distinguished letter case. In the West, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions used word dividers to separate words in sentences; however, Classical Greek and late Classical Latin both employed scriptio continua as the norm.

Although scriptio continua is evidenced in most Classic Greek and Classic Latin manuscripts, different writing styles are depicted in documents that date back even further. And it must be noted that Classical Latin did often use the interpunct, specially in monuments and inscriptions.

In the oldest Classic Greek or in Alexandria, texts were formatted in a constant string of capital letters from right to left. Later, this evolved to “boustrophedon,” which included lines written in alternating directions. It was only later on that the Romans adapted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin and, in the process, switched from using points to divide the words, to the Greek practice of scriptio continua.

Before the advent of the codex (book), Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls by enslaved scribes. The role of the scribe was to simply record everything he heard, in order to leave documentation. Because the free form of speech is so continuous, adding inaudible spaces within the manuscripts was illogical. Furthermore, at a time when ink and papyrus were quite costly, adding spaces would be an unnecessary waste of such writing mediums. Typically, the reader of the text was a trained performer, who would have already memorized the content and breaks of the script. During these reading performances, the scroll acted as a cue sheet, and therefore did not require in-depth reading.

While the lack of word parsing forced the reader to distinguish elements of the script without a visual aid, it also presented him with more freedom to interpret the text. The reader had the liberty to insert pauses and dictate tone, making the act of reading a significantly more subjective activity than it is today. However, the lack of spacing also led to some ambiguity because a minor discrepancy in word parsing could give the text a different meaning. For example, a phrase written in scriptio continua as collectamexiliopubem may be interpreted as collectam ex Ilio pubem, meaning ‘a people gathered from Troy,’ or collectam exilio pubem, ‘a people gathered for exile.' Thus, readers had to be much more cognizant of the context to which the text referred.

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