I've started an alphabet and was considering using several characters multiple times by flipping the characters on their vertical and horizontal axis. Andrew thought that I shouldn't use that much and pointed to how English has very few flipped characters. Then again, Tolkien's Agerthas and Tengwar flip characters frequently (the Tengwar is almost completely made up of flipped characters).

So is it realistic for characters to be flipped a lot, or not?

Can I reiterate my arguments? Flipped characters make things harder to read. How many times did you mix up p and q or b and d while you were learning to write? I know I did a lot

eru

Possibly. I think that would make the primary language even harder to learn because of how whether you're left-handed or right-handed makes a difference in the writing.
I'm thinking that I'll want to flip characters a little, but not much.

However, making my language easy to read isn't a main priority for me. Being realistic is.

It does make it harder to read. (Riven anyone.) Its really up to you if you want to do it. There are many alphabets that do it and there are many that don't.

Flipping things would make things easier, but I will still not use it much.

I think that flipping characters is a good idea, but a little confusing. Try flipping characters and adding some sort of mark to differenciate them Hope this helped!

*nods* I'll consider that when I get back to working on this.

Alright then! Glad I could help!

Well...

ᐁᐃᐊᐅ
ᑎᑌᑐᑕ
ᓀᓂᓄᓇ
ᒍᒐᓓᓕ
ᘢᘣᘤᘧ
ᙁᙀᙂᙅ
and so on is how the Canadian Aboriginal writing systems run. The way they work is that every character is a consonant, and how it is flipped indicates the vowel.

I heard someone say that Tolkien was a bad example to writing system makers because his Tengwar characters were too similar to each other. Yet Arabic has worse problems than that, and is the writing system of many people and many languages.

Writing systems do not always grow simpler with time either. Ancient Chinese characters were relatively simple, recognizable pictures, which became more and more complex and less recognizable over time, though there were various ways to simplify them. Many Cuneiform scripts also seemed to become more complex over time.

You can get a tremendous amount of inspiration and information by looking through Omniglot, or searching on Wikipedia.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/types.htm

Interesting... Remind me to PM you a list of what I'm looking for in the language so you can give me some helpful prods in the right direction. (if you don't mind of course)

Definitely! I love that kind of stuff.

Obviously, when creating a language/alphabet you can design it any way you want. Clearly flipped characters are realistic, so I would ask yourself - what essence are you going for? Are you going for an essence of practicality and readability? Simplicity? Elegance? Complicated and cryptic? Are you dealing with a language that's been in development for a long time, or a more basic alphabet that was designed to be quick and easy for everyday use?

Since flipped characters are more difficult to read - but they're also simpler from a design standpoint because it requires you to have less character shapes - they have a certain essence. Not one of practicality and readability, but perhaps one of complicated and cryptic because precision is needed. Such an alphabet might be impossible to read if scrawled out quickly, but maybe that's what you want. And then again, if you're going for very simple shapes and an "organic," almost mathematical or "tick mark," look for your alphabet, you might want to work with just a few basic shapes and rotate them.

Just some ramblings from someone who's designed one alphabet.