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[hatam_soferet]

I've finished translating the alef-bet part of Mishnat Soferim, a treatise on the letter forms by R' Yisrael Meir Kagan, the author of the Mishnah Berurah. Despite its name, it doesn't have much to do with the more famous Mishnah. It's a 19th-century Polish work.

My translation is here.

Here's a sample of the sort of thing you'll see; this is from the directions for the form of letter khaf which comes at the ends of words.

Its leg should be long and its roof short, so as not to resemble reish, although the roof should not be too short, because then it might look like a long vav or like straight nun, and a child's reading it as such would invalidate it. Accordingly, at the end of a line one may not stretch it to make it long at all. In general one should not stretch letters, but this is because that's the nice way to do it and bedeavad [post facto; in less-than-ideal circumstances - JTF] they aren't invalid; if one extends the roof of straight khaf so that it looks like reish it is invalid.

This is a nice segue into the Stretchy Letters post, which I've been meaning to write for a while now. I'm planning to write it after I've had supper...not that we have any actual food around the place; I'm going to have to go shopping, bleugh. Booooooring.