Some Military Glyphs

Sutton Glyphs

The following glyphs in the left column were lifted from the Fort Sill website for comparing to Blissymbolics methods for displaying the same information, but with an important benefit: standardization across all domains. A glyph designer in any department of the military, using these methods, could work independently designing glyphs for their department, and if they remain true to the Bliss assignment of meaning to each elemental glyph, cross-domain/department conficts would be exceedingly rare. There is very little glyph polysemy in the language, and we should strive to keep it that way.

The Fort Sill glyph on the left is nearly identical to the Bliss glyph on the right. But the Bliss glyph means simply: "to surround or encircle", with no indication at this point that the area is necessarily to be "secured". In nonlinear Blissymbolics, "surround and secure" would be indicated as below with "secure" defined by the container (bowl, vessel) glyph and the protection (roof) glyph as "contain and protect": So this entire composite Bliss glyph means "surround, contain and protect", or simply surround and secure. A civilian would probably just say "keep safe".   To simply indicate "surround and contain" use this glyph which lacks the protection glyph element. The beauty of using an elemental approach to visual language is the ability to make small modifications to meaning by modifying one elemental part of an overall glyph instead of going back to the drawing board all the time.

In the Fort Sill glyphs, "surround" seems to apply to surrounding an area of a map with a glyph, not surrounding actual territory prior to securing or containing, etc, but it could imply both.

To "surround and contain opposition" forces simply add the glyph for opposition which is derived from one of the two relation glyph elements in Bliss. In my opinion, the Fort Sill glyph on the left breaks consistency with similar meaning glyphs, yielding a less standardized, integrated glyph system, and weakens potential for having a universal cross-domain system. But the Fort Sill glyph is not entirely inconsistent with Bliss, since its basic form is the container glyph from Bliss, just turned on its side. So if the Fort Sill glyph cannot be dispensed with because of some way in which it integrates or is used somewhere, it could be added to a Bliss/Military system without weakening the semantic assigments of the overall system of elemental glyphs. No polysemy would be added to the system.

Since the Fort Sill glyphs are apparently intended to actually surround areas on a map, the Bliss glyphs above (which are optimized to be reducable to icon size) could be modified to empty the inner space of each glyph, allowing other map information to come through:

Also, lines could be thinned, and on electronic displays, the glyphs could be semi-transparent if desired. They could even go very transparent when hovering to allow for seeing all map detail under a glyph. On low tech paper maps or devices, thinning lines would suffice.

The glyph on the left indicates an area to be retained, apparently, kept. The Bliss glyph on the right expresses this meaning by containing into the future .

One of the benefits of simply adopting the Bliss system is that when improvising new glyphs or icons, you would only need significant cross domain research when you're thinking of breaking the elemental rules of the system for a certain glyph. Follow the rules and the glyphs can nearly always cross domains without conflict.

The "isolate" glyph on the left is probably fairly intuitive, and also consistent with Bliss, if the meaning is intended to imply an aggressive stance or activity towards those in that area so they can't interact with anyone or anything outside the area (thus effectively isolating them). The sharp points, like arrowheads or nose cones of a rocket, strongly imply attacking. In Bliss, the divide glyph can be adapted (as on the right) to clearly imply only the meaning of "isolating" without the aggressive implication. The area to be isolated could be a civilian area. The protection glyph could be added to the isolate glyph when isolating for protection an area of non-combatants, as below.

How does an "x" imply occupation? "X" marks the spot? But marks it for what? On a Fort Sill glyph further down this page, x means to destroy, fairly intuitive. But here it is either meaningless or confusing, probably taken out of thin air, adhoc. To occupy implies dwelling there, at least temporarily, so the Bliss glyph on the right communicates this with a "floorless" building , a temporary shelter. Normally, the glyph for building has a floor.

The (Fort Sill) canalization glyph on the left could be modified just a little to create a Bliss glyph which would be at least partially understood by someone from a completely unrelated military service or department, if a Bliss/Military glyph system were in use. The glyph on the right starts with the basic shape on the left, then substitutes the water glyph on the bottom, and the "lead or control" glyph on the top. Any fairly experienced Bliss user would immediately know the glyph is something about controlling (leading) water. And the specialists would learn the precise meaning just as they must anyway, but learning and remembering it would be easier in an integrated, elemental system. If desired, the canalization glyph on the left could be drawn with standard Bliss software and easily be adopted as a Bliss outline drawing because it happens to be composable (unintentionally) from standard Bliss graphic elements. In fact, my planned Bliss software would include 20 or 30 additional graphic elements so that any outline drawing and any diagram from virtually any visual language will be easily composable within the software. The additional elements will still have the geometric "feel" of the originals so they won't look out of place, they won't alter the simple geometric appearance of the Bliss system. But theoretically, the software could be used to create new and different visual languages unrelated to Bliss.

I suppose the glyph on the left is meant to imply "encircling" the area it points to, which would mean the seizing (taking) of the area, but in Bliss it would mean "talking down" and is very similar to "spitting". In an integrated elemental system, this should be cleared up. The Bliss glyph on the right means "to take" and conveniently, it also has an arrow which can be pointed to areas on a map. A Bliss user of average experience would recognize this meaning immediately. An arrow pointing away from a bowl means "removing from the other guy's bowl", to take.