Over the past year I have wanted a way to write down notes and be able to read them later. The catch being, I didn't want anyone else to be able to read them. The result ended up being Codus! or Coban, depending on how the poll goes for the name. Just so you know, everything written is English, its just the letters that are replaced with the new letters. Here is the alphabet!
It's big because
A.) I can't resize it b/c stupid imgur is dumb
B.) I guess it helps you see the letters

If I had to make a secret message in English, I'd just write it in katakana. The nice thing about it is that it is not a 1:1 transliteration, so even if you used OCR on it, Google Translate could still not tell you what it was.

「アイ　ドンツ　シンク　ユ　アル　テイキング　ザ　ライツ　アップローチュ　ツ　ダ　プロブレン。」 - "I don't think you are taking the right approach to the problem."

After a total of 49 views, 4 votes, in 2 days, I'm calling this Codus. I may also remove the topic as nobody else seems to find writing code interesting. (other than with computers )

Well, cryptographers may find writing code interesting . Have you explored other types of codes that aren't alphabets or ciphers? Very interesting what people have come up with across the ages.

JWinslow23 might find this interesting if he still happens to visit Cemetech

I've used a bunch of codes throughout my life, having a fair bit of interest in the subject. As far as hand-writing code, there are two that I have favored. Earlier in life, I used a variant of the Tic-Tac-Toe (Pigpen) Cipher, including for a time capsule that stayed successfully buried in a stone wall in a town in upstate New York for over a year. Since college, I have extensively used the Atbash cipher, at times using it enough that I got fast enough to hand-write it almost as fast as I can write English. Neither is particularly secure, but both are good at obfuscating text from casual observers.

I remember that ancient scientists actually used to write their discoveries in anagram form, as a form of concealment. For example, Galileo discovered what looked like Saturn eating two of its moons periodically, and he sent this in anagram form to Kepler...but Kepler unscrambled it as saying that Mars has two moons, which is correct, but wasn't proven until years later. Interesting stuff, these.

I'm following the topic but merely out of curiosity as I've never understood the need to write in cryptography. I always like reading about people who do, though. Just, for me, it's more of a burden than an advantage. I'd always require the cipher unless I slaved away for months to remember the translations. Secondly, a perhaps a bit hypocritically, I don't mind people reading what I write but I do encrypt my hard drives and data. But that's mostly because I keep tax and personal documents on there that I don't want getting into someones hands should my computer or drives get stolen.

Can you walk us through the process of creating the alphabet? Why the symbols you chose? Was it for legibility or quickness, whether in writing or reading or, perhaps all of that? Why is the uppercase and lowercase N, O, X and, Z so similar while the T and K is vastly different? Why is lowercase V the same as it's english counterpart; and I guess lowercase K for that matter too?

Google translates it too:
"I Dontsu sink Yu Al taking the Rights up low Chu Tsu da Puroburen." (It thinks it's Japanese)

It uses the Japanese katakana script but is not actual Japanese.

I originally based the code off of sign language letters. I was toying with the idea of writing down a language that didn't need to be written, (the deaf can see) so I knew it had never been done before. Take the uppercase K for example, make a "peace sign" and then put your thumb between your two fingers. That is a K. The carrot like mark is the pinky and ring fingers, the long fingers are your middle and index, with the short thumb between the two. Most capital letters still look like their sign counterpart (which made remembering them much easier).

Along with a base of sign language, I vowed to not use any curves at all. This called for many strokes and difficult to read sentences. The N, M, and T all looked like each other because their signs are just a thumb spot different (see above). So I made changes to those letters to reduce some lines and eyesores. Then I got a little change happy and focused on making letters more like English. (one connected symbol, the direction the end faces, similarity between upper and lowercase). The result of this optimization is the lowercase set, which was harder for me to remember as they were all random. This is what inspired me to make k look like a poorly made English k. Nobody would notice among gibberish, and I would be able to remember what the lowercase for k, t, and other letters would be. Most of the letters I kept the same uppercase->lowercase was because I liked writing them so much. The D has to be my favorite letter, like a backwards chair.