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Concept
Scriptio continua
Summary
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, diacritics, 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. Classical Latin often used the interpunct, especially in monuments and inscriptions.
The earliest texts in Classical Greek that used the Greek alphabet, as opposed to Linear B, were formatted in a constant string of capital letters from right to left. Later, that evolved to “boustrophedon”, which included lines written in alternating directions.
The Latin language and the related Italic languages first came to be written using alphabetic scripts adapted from the Etruscan alphabet (itself ultimately derived from the Greek alphabet). Initially, Latin texts commonly marked word divisions by points, but later on the Romans came to follow the Greek practice of scriptio continua.
Before (and after) the advent of the codex (book), Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls by slave scribes. The role of the scribes was to simply record everything they heard to create documentation. Because speech is continuous, there was no need to add spaces. Typically, the reader of the text was a trained performer, who would have already memorised the content and breaks of the script. During the reading performances, the scroll acted as a cue sheet and therefore did not require in-depth reading.
The lack of word parsing forced the reader to distinguish elements of the script without a visual aid, but it also presented the reader with more freedom to interpret the text.
Official source
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