Tengwar Cursive

About the font

Tengwar Cursive version 1.00
Copyright 2000 Harri Perälä
The font is freeware. It may be freely copied, but it should not be distributed without this documentation. The calligraphic style is based on the One Ring inscription in The Lord of the Rings.

Font homepage: http://www.iki.fi/harri.perala/tengwar.htm
My email: harri.perala@iki.fi 

Tengwar Cursive uses the same character mapping as Daniel Smith’s Tengwar Quenya, Tengwar Sindarin and Tengwar Noldor (release 1.9d), available at http://www.geocities.com/fontmaster.geo/ or http://www.gis.net/~dansmith/fonts/. There are several utilities designed for these fonts, and with some reservations they can be used with Tengwar Cursive as well.

Keyboard mapping

Blue = a normal key, nothing special here. 
Red = a key that doesn’t do anything. These keys should be mapped to some lesser used signs, but these characters are not included in this font. Some of them might appear in later versions. 
Green = a key added only for compatibility. It produces the same sign as some other key. For example, since there are only three different versions of each tehta in this font (Daniel Smith’s fonts have four), D procudes the same sign as E.
Grey = a Tengwar letter used to demonstrate what some tehta looks like.

Lower case keys (on a US keyboard):
` `  1 1  2 2  3 3  4 4  5 5  6 6  7 7  8 8   9 9   0 30    - -  = =   \ \
q q  w w  e e  r r  t t  y y  u u  i i  o o  p 6p   [ 6 [  ] ] 
a a  s s  d d  f f  g g  h h  j j  k k  l l  ; 6;  ' 6'
z z  x x  c c  v v  b b  n n  m m  , ,   . .  /  1/

Upper case:

~ ~   !!  @ @  #2#  $ 2$  % 2%  ^2^  &2&  **  ( 5(   ) 4)  _ j_  +6+   | z|
QQ  WW  E 6E  R 6R  T 6T  Y 6Y  U 6U  I I  O 6O  P 5P  { 5{   }
AA  SS  D 6D  F 6F  G 6G  H 6H  J 6J  K K  L   : 5:  " 5"
Z Z  X X  C `C  V `V  B `B  N `N  M `M   <    > `>  ? X????    

Other:

When not using any utility, you can produce these signs by holding down Alt and typing the four-digit code.
Alt+0212  2Ô Alt+0213, Alt+0214  6Ö Alt+0215  `×
Alt+0216  2Ø Alt+0217, Alt+0218  6Ú Alt+0219  `Û
Alt+0220  2Ü Alt+0221, Alt+0222  6Þ Alt+0223  `ß
Alt+0232  2è Alt+0233, Alt+0234  6é Alt+0235  `ë
Alt+0200  2È Alt+0201, Alt+0202  6Ê Alt+0203  `Ë
Alt+0204  2Ì Alt+0205, Alt+0206  6Î Alt+0207  `Ï
Alt+0192  À Alt+0193  Á Alt+0189  ½ (halla)
Signs unique to this font:

The following signs are not compatible with Tengwar Quenya/Sindarin/Noldor. In those fonts, these locations are used by some less common signs (such as “Alternate letter for quesse” and “Alternate letter for 'schwa'”), so the incompatibility should not cause problems in ordinary use.
Alt+0190  ¾ Alt+0188  2¼ Alt+0179  6³ Alt+0191  `¿ 
(In Tengwar Quenya: ¾ ¼ ³ ¿ )
Alt+0196  2Ä Alt+0174  6® Alt+0199  `Ç 
(In Tengwar Quenya: Ä ® Ç )

Writing with Tengwar Cursive

Some tips for using this font:
•	Use a large font size. I would consider 72 a minimum. When creating bitmap images, anti-aliasing helps a lot.
•	Although the font is already somewhat italic, you may want to try italicizing it to make it closer to the Ring inscription style.
•	Tengwar Cursive can be used in the mode of Beleriand, but the “tehta modes” tend to look better. I think the font looks best when used as in the Ring inscription, with entire sentences written as single words.

Using Tengwar Cursive with utilities

In principle this font can be used with any program that is designed to work with Tengwar Quenya/Sindarin/Noldor, including the Word macros by Smith. These programs usually do not allow the user to select any other fonts, such as Tengwar Cursive, so you must create your Tengwar inscription in one of the three supported fonts. (The Tengwar Scribe is an exception, allowing the user to use any installed font.) After it’s done, you copy the text to a word processor (not necessary when using Word and the macros, of course) and change the font to Tengwar Cursive. If the inscription doesn’t contain any rare signs that are not found in my font, this should work fairly well. Sometimes you might need to change some tehtar to make them fit the character widths of the tengwar better.

Thanks…

…to Matt Bauerfeind, Måns Björkman and Dan Smith, to anyone who has written to me to comment on the font at one time or another, and to anyone who downloaded the font and read this friendly manual.