This means that anyone who knows the finger spelling alphabet can communicate – though, it can be a lengthy process as every letter has to be spelt and is therefore not widely used for general conversations.
As you watch that video running forward and then backward, the finger erasing the alphabet, A to Z, and then recreating the letters, Z to A, you might be tempted to read it as a kind of allegory of photography.
She learned Braille and the manual alphabet — finger positions representing letters — and, at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, underwent two operations, which enabled her to read almost normally, though the condition of her eyes was fragile and inconsistent over her lifetime.
DON Use sign language if you know ASL and it is appropriate.
As if wearing headphones, I'm putting some of myself to sleep, rushing to the end of my days: there's a death wish in reducing life to watching one's fingers twitch on the alphabet.
Although the assessment of sexual differences in perceptual and reactive abilities is complicated by a number of factors (including age and personality), girls and women tend to be more proficient than boys and men in such psychomotor skills as finger dexterity and inverted-alphabet printing.
This will allow you to build an alphabet of fingering sequences, which are the building blocks of musical phrases and melodies.
Ann Hamilton's close-up of a finger erasing and generating an alphabet suggests links to Chinese calligraphy and to Islamic objects with Arabic inscriptions.
"We now have a full alphabet of zinc fingers," Mr. Lanphier said, "but when we started the company it was like typing a novel with two fingers".
Later on, though, after she learned to express herself by using a manual alphabet (pressing her fingers into the hand of her interlocutor), she used to say that she had in fact four senses: taste, smell, touch, and what she called the sense of "think".
