Overview The Modi script derives from the
Nāgari family of scripts and is a modification of the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script intended for continuous writing. Although Modi is based upon Devanagari, it differs considerably from it in terms of letter forms, rendering behaviours, and orthography. The shapes of some consonants, vowels, and vowel signs are similar. The differences are visible in the behaviours of these characters in certain circumstances, such as consonant-vowel combinations and consonant conjuncts, which are standard features of Modi orthography. The Modi script has 46 distinctive letters, of which 36 are consonants and 10 vowels.
Cursive features The Modi script has several characteristics that facilitate writing, minimising having to lift the pen from the paper for dipping in ink while moving from one character to the next. Some characters are "broken" versions of their Devanagari counterparts, and many characters are more circular in shape. These characteristics make Modi a sort of
cursive style of writing Marathi. The cursive nature of the script also allowed scribes to easily make multiple copies of a document if required.
Features of the letters Numerous modifications are made to the Modi script in writing as "shortcuts", reflecting its history as a quasi-shorthand form of Devanagari. The consonants fall into three broad categories: 1) Those that always retain their isolated form and attach their dependent vowel forms in a way common to most Indic scripts; 2) Those that take on a "contextual" form and change their form only in the presence of a dependent vowel immediately after, in which case those vowel forms are attached to the contextual form of the consonant in a uniform way as done with the consonants in Category 1 and with most other Indic alphabets; and 3) Those that form ligatures in the presence of vowel following the consonants. The ligatures are generally determined by the shape of the consonant and the presence of a loop on the right. Regarding conjuncts, as in Devanagari,
ksha and
tra have special conjuncts, while other consonants typically occupy half forms or contextual forms. The letter
ra is special, as it can take different visual positions as the first consonant in a conjunct cluster depending on whether it is palatalized or not. As the second consonant in a cluster, however, it functions almost identically as in Devanagari. Alternative forms of the letter
ra are also used to make multisyllabic clusters involving it. This is seen in
kara,
tara,
sara, and a few others as a subjoined
ra to the bottom right of a letter, and in joining at the end of other syllables, it is seen with a curved head. Following dependent vowel signs like -aa and punctuation marks like dandas, the
ra also joins underneath, and any additional vowel marks are written directly on top of the subjoined
ra. Modi also has an empty circle that indicates abbreviations, which also may have been borrowed by
Goykanadi, used for writing
Konkani, which is closely related to
Marathi.
Head stroke The head stroke in Modi is unlike Devanagari in that it is typically written before the letters are, in order to produce a "ruled page" for writing Modi in lines. Thus, there are no word boundaries that can be visibly seen, since the head stroke does not break between words.
Usage The Modi script was frequently used as a
shorthand script for swift writing in business and administration. Modi was used primarily by administrative people as well as businessmen in keeping their accounts and writing Hundis (credit notes). Modi was also used to encrypt the message since not all people were well-versed in reading this script. == Printing and typing ==