Cyphers are writing systems that make it harder to see what's being said! So, what's being written is english, it's just hard to know what's being said because of the way the english is being written. While a cypher makes it hard to read what's being said, my favourite part is just how the cypher can change the aesthetic and feel of the words. It's like its own form of art!
This is a cypher I designed called Riverscript. It's a very flow-y cypher, and that made it quite hard to design. I wanted the symbols to be quite simple and distinct from each other, but I also wanted every symbol to be able to flow into the next. This, of course, influenced the design of the alphabet
The red represents the start of the line, and the green represents the end of the line. In actual writing the green will flow into the red and then into the actual symbol. The "tails" as I like to call them, that being the red and green spots, can morph and change during the situation to flow into each symbol. However, the actual symbol, that being the black parts, shouldn't morph as that's what differentiates the symbols from each other.
The connected nature of the consonants are the core of riverscript. In this way, riverscript is almost innately cursive.
Riverscript has vowels attached to the consonants. If you were paying attention and saw that the vowels didn't have tails in the alphabet, this is why. Also, ignore the random blue "house" there, it's a reference to a book :3
These attatchment rules aren't perfect; sometimes there are times where you're not sure where the vowels should go. In that case, just pick the left spot as long as it doesn't break rule 1.
Punctuation is important! Punctuation does not connect with the rest of the word. This is for readability, as it makes punctuation stand out a bit more. All of the punctuation were designed to be made with one stroke, axcept the quotes to make them easier to differentiate from the comma. If you ever have trouble drawing the exclamation point, try to think of drawing a really subtle S, and then hooking the bottom to make the "point" of the normal '!'.
Riverscript actually has two ways of representing numbers, binary and decimal. I'm not going to get into what exactly that means, but essentially you have options. The short should be nearly on the middle line while the tall should be around twice the height of the short. Just make it obvious that one's tall and one is short and you'll be fine.
The good ol' decimal system. The system we write in, in fact. Once again, these symbols have their tails denoted with red and green. Why does binary have the chance to chunk in fours while decimal does not? Readability. The binary system has very simple symbols, but decimal does not. It's mainly just to make it easier to see. And since 4 digits represent a lot more numbers in decimal than in binary, it comes up often enough that staying consistent feels important.
You've done it, you've learned a cypher of mine! Here's a short scene I wrote that I transcribed into riverscript, though, with some error. If you can read this, you deserve a high five! It doesn't have everything I talked about, lacking numbers for instance, but it shows you what it looks like in actual writing. And, it's pretty satisfying if I do say so myself.