`LAYOUT AND SCRIPT IN LETTERS`

Interpersonal communication was one of the earliest functions of writing across the world, and the letter was a versatile *genre serving that function across a wide range of social contexts. Letters ranged from official to personal in purpose and tone and carried information not only through words but also in the physical form and layout of the text.

In the written culture of East Asia, literary Chinese functioned as a shared learned script for educated elites for about two millennia. Most terms referring to letters in literary Chinese allude to various material supports older than paper that made writing and reading possible: bamboo strips, wooden panels, wooden tablets, silk, brushes, and so on. The usage of these terms suggests that letter writing is as old as the history of writing itself. Just as letters functioned as a synecdoche for writing in lexicographical traditions of some European languages, shu (Korean sŏ, Japanese sho)—the term most commonly used to refer to epistles in literary Chinese—means “to write” as a verb and “the act of writing” or “writing” itself as a noun.

Literati across East Asia had good reason to sharpen their letter-writing skills. The official positions that they would take required them to be effective letter writers. In one way or another, most official documents took epistolary formats, with designated senders and addressees. The drafts of outgoing letters together with received letters thus formed the fundamental decision documents in the premodern polities of East Asia. The operation of the Chinese tributary system, moreover, required scholar-officials to draft flawless diplomatic letters using the appropriate epistolary *protocols, to prevent unnecessary diplomatic tensions.

The emergence of new linguistic environments in Korea and Japan by virtue of the invention of *vernacular scripts further expanded the scope of epistolary networks. The invention of Japanese kana script, which originated from eighth-century attempts to express Japanese sounds with Chinese characters, precipitated an exuberant vernacular literary culture during the Heian period (794–1185), which aristocratic women actively joined as both poets and letter writers. Elementary textbooks taking the form of exchanged letters (ōraimono) promoted both popular *literacy and correspondence in *early modern Japan. Likewise, the ease of learning the Korean alphabet, invented in the mid-fifteenth century, allowed women and nonelites to express their thoughts and feelings in written forms. As prolific letter writers, Korean elite women could maintain their own social networks separate from their positions in the patriarchal structure within their husbands’ families. For the users of vernacular script, letters must have been the most accessible genre, which did not threaten the male elites’ dominance in the literary Chinese classical tradition. Most letter writers other than male elites wrote nothing but letters.

When the sheer number of epistles circulated increased exponentially, something exciting began to develop from the seemingly mundane and trivial practice of letter writing. The users of vernacular scripts in both Korea and Japan experimented with the physical layouts of their letters. Some users of the Korean alphabet created nonlinear epistolary forms starting in the late fifteenth century (figure 1). Korean people did not even name this particular layout, probably because of its mundane and ubiquitous usage, which I call “spiral letters.” Letter writers had to rotate the texts counterclockwise by ninety degrees several times to complete their messages, which divided a single text into several sections. This spiral movement in writing letters brought about the same bodily motion in reading them. Spiral forms developed in elite women’s vernacular Korean letters first, then carried over to male elites’ literary Chinese letters. Considering that male elites disdained the easy Korean alphabet as unsuitable for serious Confucian scholarship, women letter writers could have devised this new textual technology to make their letters appear complex visually, whatever their contents. These complex layouts dovetailed with the contemporary scholarly culture that prized painstaking learning.

`Figure 1. One of the two oldest existing vernacular Korean letters written in spiral form, purportedly in the 1490s. 49.9` × `34.9 cm. Photo courtesy of Daejeon Municipal Museum. Effects added by the author.`

Some epistles written by aristocratic women in Heian Japan also used nonlinear textual layouts. The writers indented radically to the middle of the page, leaving a generous upper margin. When there was no space left at the lower left edge, they continued to write in the upper margin and then moved on to the blank space on the right side of the page—“sleeve writing” (sodegaki). Besides sleeve writing, “scattered writing” (chirashi gaki) also developed in kana composition and spacing, in which the columns of text neither start at the same height nor stay straight all the time. Such quaint and unpredictable textual layouts might have expressed the emotional sensitivity of the writer. Thomas LaMarre, however, has claimed that scattered writing presents the Heian variation of the Chinese calligraphic model by relaxing the strict striation of space.

Aesthetic values attached to Japanese scattered writing made this form appear intact in both manuscript and printed form. When Korean spiral letters were printed, however, they were straightened up and rearranged into linear reading order and their contents extensively edited. Just as the vernacular grammatical and syntactic apparatuses were removed from manuscripts when they were printed, these vernacular textual layouts were undone to incorporate the texts into the Sinicized world of books. The process of devernacularization turned informal messages in unusual textual layouts into formal information inscribed on printed pages.

The manipulation of textual space can be observed globally across diverse periods. In some contexts in early modern Europe, for example, letter-writing protocols governed not only verbal forms of address but also the layout on the page. Jonathan Gibson called attention in 1997 to the clues that “significant space” in a manuscript letter offered about the social standing of sender and recipient—information that is typically lost in any printed edition from the time or since. Vernacular letter-writing manuals starting in 1521 in French and in 1568 in English called for the subscriptions (or sign-offs) of letters to social superiors to be placed as low as possible on a page, and higher up on the page as the standing of the sender was equal or superior to that of the recipient. Similarly in the especially elaborate hierarchical system of the French royal court under Louis XIV in the late seventeenth century, letter writers showed deference by leaving space between the address to the recipient (“Dear …”) and the beginning of the letter itself—the greater the deference, the greater the opening interval left blank. As Giora Sternberg has brought to light, in letters among social equals the text simply began on a new line. By contrast when the king wrote, he started the letter immediately following the address, since he outranked everyone else; but out of gender courtesy he “gave the line” when writing to the queen. When members of the court wrote to social superiors they left a variable amount of blank space depending on their standing relative to the recipient. A duke would leave seven or eight lines, or fingers, when writing to the king; five or six lines when writing to the king’s brother; and three lines for princes of the blood. Similarly spelling out abbreviations was a sign of deference. Breaches of this protocol had serious consequences—insults taken and redress sought—as can be traced through disputes preserved in the archives. When distinctions of rank were uncertain, communication could break down altogether. An alternative mode of communication developed that bypassed the strict epistolary conventions: the “billet” or short note was meant for rapid and easy communication, although it worked seamlessly only when there was goodwill on both sides. While Louis XIV was personally involved in the explicit codification of these among other courtly protocols, epistolary conventions concerning layout both predated and postdated his reign.

The usage of blank space to express deference to the addressee also appears in Tibetan Buddhist correspondence. Tibetan epistolary manuals in the early modern period instruct letter writers to leave a vertical space or “hierarchy” space (gong’og) after the opening line. Just as in letters in early modern France, this hierarchy space in Tibetan letters was measured by one’s finger’s breadth (sor): eight fingers of hierarchy space when addressing a lama or a king, two fingers of hierarchy space when writing to friends, and so on. These manuals also advised using a large piece of paper, preferably white and fragrant, when writing to superiors. Likewise, calligraphic styles were attuned to the hierarchical distance between sender and addressee. When an inferior wrote to a superior, small handwriting with lines stacked densely together conveyed the soft voice of humility and deference. By contrast, superiors exhibited their elevated status and authoritative voice through large letters with sweeping tails and wider spaces between lines. As in the case of Korean spiral letters, all these spatial manifestations of hierarchical relationships between the senders and addressees in manuscript letters collapsed into continuous lines of script when the letters were published in print editions. The above examples attest that letter writers across many different contexts performed what James Daybell calls “the social politics of manuscript space in the physical layout of letters,” which was closely related to letter writers’ social status, gender, and intimacy with the addressee as well as the purpose of the given letters, and the circumstances of correspondence.

Another distinctive form of layout in European and American letters of the nineteenth century was crossed writing, in which a second text was written over the first at a right angle. Jane Austen’s 1808 letter to her sister, Cassandra, preserved in the Morgan Library and Museum, for instance, contains two paragraphs of writing, one written over the other at a right angle. British and American letter writers produced these “crossed letters” to save postage, which was charged by the number of sheets of paper. This layout, however, remained popular even after the introduction of Penny Black postage in 1840, which charged a flat rate of one penny for letters of up to half an ounce. Crossed letters likely also appealed to some letter writers for reasons other than saving textual space. In Emma, for instance, Austen described how Miss Bates admired the exquisiteness of crossed letters that she received from her niece, Jane Fairfax. Writing a perfect crossed letter without ruining the appearance of the page took skill, which made the exchange of letters more enjoyable. The layouts of letters added crucial elements of meaning to their contents, although their connotations varied under different sociocultural circumstances.

Letter-like exchanges today, from email to text and social media messages, have dropped most of these earlier epistolary conventions in favor of a stated preference for informality, speed, and directness, but they have spawned conventions of their own, using symbols and layout in addition to words to convey information beyond the words themselves.

Hwisang Cho

`FURTHER READING`

Hwisang Cho, The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea, 2020; James Daybell, “Material Meanings and the Social Signs of Manuscript Letters in Early Modern England,” Literature Compass 6, no. 3 (2009): 647–67; Jonathan Gibson, “Significant Space in Manuscript Letters,” Seventeenth Century 12, no. 1 (1997): 1–9; Christina Kilby, “Bowing with Words: Paper, Ink, and Bodies in Tibetan Buddhist Epistles,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 87, no. 1 (2019): 260–81; Thomas LaMarre, Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription, 2000; Antje Richter, Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China, 2013; Giora Sternberg, “Epistolary Ceremonial: Corresponding Status at the Time of Louis XIV,” Past and Present 204 (2009): 33–88.