THAT'S ABOUT THE SIZE OF IT

 

There isn't really a way in the written English language to denote a glottal stop.

For example, many people commonly drop the letters "T" & "R" when talking, especially certain UK accents.

A phrase like "a bottle of water" for instance would sound phonetically like "a boh'ul of woh'ah". 

Easy to say when talking but very tricky to write down with precision in order for it to be understood when reading.

So I think I may have devised a way to depict a glottal stop in it's written format.

Using the same phrase above as a demonstration - fill the gap where the "t" & "r" were dropped by having a small sized "t" & r" put in their place. As in - smaller in scale to the rest of the letters used in the phrase.

Physically writing it with pen on paper is easy, but typing it requires you having to use a much smaller font size solely for the "t" & "r" than is used for the rest of the letters in the phrase.

If typing out the phrase with a font size of 12 say, the "t" & "r" would need to be changed down to 8 or suchlike.

Thus - "a bottle of water".

I reckon it would be easy to understand that small sized letters displayed in this written manner represents a glottal stop pronunciation.

If it was officially adopted in standard English, a computer could have the equivalent of a special character for a small "t" & "r" and be introduced like punctuation marks, to save changing font size when typing.

An little idea for the English language experts suggestion box at least.

GG