For those of you who don’t know me, my last name is Heiselt. It’s German, and therefore is pronounced HI-SELT. I once had a random girl in college tell me that it is the most marriable last name that she had ever heard of. I did not marry this girl, but I tend to agree with her. It’s a great last name. Unless, of course, you can’t spell very well.
I think everyone has trouble with the ei or ie letter combo at some early stage in their life. This is why some brilliant linguist came up with the phrase, “I before E, except after C, when sounding like A, like neighbor or weigh.” Or, if you grew up with my last name, “It’s either I or E that comes before the other one, except after C (or was it G?), when it sounds like neighbor or weigh or Heiselt….?”
So, after many embarrassing years of looking up how to spell “believe” (and yes, I did have to think through that very carefully just now) I decided to create my own ligature that can be used anytime the two letters meet.
Here are some of my attempts. I tried all sorts of other ugly and/or random combos, but in the end simplicity won out. So here you are my children and my children’s children. Enjoy.
i love it. it reads surprisingly easily too
This is brilliant! I’m surprised too that it reads so well.
Agreed, Micah, simplicity wins! Cool concept — and English really ought to have more accent marks/special characters like every other language.
Before reading your explanation…I glanced over the last phrase and totally read/understood it without realizing what you’d done. It really does work well!
interesting concept