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User talk:Tsja

Hallo Jan-Willem! Je bent hier lekker bezig Nederland in te kleuren, zie ik. Zou je dezelfde informatie misschien ook, al is het eerst in het Engels, op de Nederlandse Wikipedia willen zetten? Die loopt namelijk nog helemaal niet lekker. Misschien wil je anderen Nederlanders vragen daarop mee te doen? Ik werk zelf ook op beide versies mee. Alvast bedankt! --Thea Kemper

I thought I would just pass on a thought I had while doing 1600-?? the last few days, as I see you've picked up on 1 AD-??. In the timeline at the top that reads:

1600 1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610

(Or whatever set of years one is using) I'm thinking that the years surrounding the bold date should be the preceding five and the following five, rather than just the year placed within its decade, as seems to have been done sporadically so far.

My reasoning is:

1. It makes it easier to explore around the year within its context, and not have to worry about arbitrary decade boundaries (as one would have with years ending in "0" or "9").

2. If one is hopping pages year-by-year forwards or backwards, the link for the next page will appear underneath the mouse pointer when the link for the current year runs. If you're not sure what I mean, go to 1620, then from there go to 1621, then from 1621 go to 1622, and so on. It makes flipping through the years dead easy.

Do the years you select as you wish, of course, but I thought I'd point out what I was doing up here in the 16th century and see if you thought it a good idea. -- Paul Drye

Sounds like a good idea to me. -- Tsja

After some further thinking and seeing what MichaelTinkler has done to 840 I like this scheme best for the years:

 * Centuries: Year in Review 1st Century

 * 1st century BC - 1st century - 2nd century

 * Decades: 0s BC - 0s - 10s - 20s - 30s - 40s - 50s - 60s - 70s - 80s - 90s - 100s

 * 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

The year and the decade are bold. In that way we can get rid of the the line "39 - decade 30s - 1st century".

I've changed the comma's in the decade line to dashes to make it more logical.

- Is Tsja "well" as in "water supply" or as in "health/good state" or the frequent English interjection "w-e-l-l-l"? Thanks for all your work on chronology, by the way! --MichaelTinkler

No, it's like, "well..." or 'h'm..." It became my internet alias when I was asked for one and couldn't think of a good one. Now I'm stuck with it. --Tsja
 * I like the insertion of ellipses into the translation - it makes it all clear! --MichaelTinkler

- I like your new template for the years. Bookmarking it now....--Paul Drye

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Main namespace cleanup
In an effort to clean up the main namespace, I've moved your old main namespace userpage to User:Tsja/old, as there's some edit history you might want to keep. Otherwise just delete it. --fvw *  12:28, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

 * And I've history merged the relevant parts of the page history with your actual user page. Part of it is still in the /Old subpage, though. Graham 87 08:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

More history merging
I've also history merged your user talk page, and restored the page Tsja/Years. Graham 87 15:32, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:51, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Tsja


text:
User:Trixium

de:Benutzer:Trixium Hello Wikipedians !

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:Trixium


text:
Light rail

Light rail (or light rail transit, abbreviated to LRT) is a form of passenger urban rail transit using rolling stock derived from tram technology while also having some features from heavy rapid transit.

The term was coined in 1972 in the United States, to create an English equivalent for the German word Stadtbahn meaning City railway. Different definitions in some countries exist, but in the United States, light rail operates primarily along exclusive rights-of-way and uses either individual tramcars or multiple units coupled together, with a lower capacity and speed than a long heavy-rail passenger train or rapid transit system.

Narrowly defined it has rolling stock that is similar to a traditional tram, while it operates at a higher capacity and speed and often on an exclusive right-of-way. In broader use, light rail transit includes tram-like operations mostly on streets. A few light rail networks tend to have characteristics closer to rapid transit or even commuter rail; yet only when these systems are fully grade-separated, they are referred to as light metros.

History
The world's first electric tram operated in Sestroretsk near Saint Petersburg, Russia, invented and operated on an experimental basis by Fyodor Pirotsky in 1880. The first tramway was the Gross-Lichterfelde tramway in Lichterfelde near Berlin in Germany, which opened in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens who contacted Pirotsky. It initially drew current from the rails, with overhead wire being installed in 1883. The first interurban to emerge in the United States was the Newark and Granville Street Railway in Ohio, which opened in 1889.

Postwar
Many original tram and streetcar systems in the United Kingdom, United States, and elsewhere were decommissioned starting in the 1950s as subsidies for the car increased. Britain abandoned its tram systems, except for Blackpool, with the closure of Glasgow Corporation Tramways (one of the largest in Europe) in 1962.

Revival
Although some traditional trolley or tram systems continued to exist in San Francisco and elsewhere, the term "light rail" has come to mean a different type of rail system as modern light rail technology has primarily post-WWII West German origins. An attempt by Boeing Vertol to introduce a new American light rail vehicle in the 1970s was proven to have been a technical failure by the following decade. After World War II, the Germans retained many of their streetcar networks and evolved them into model light rail systems (Stadtbahnen). With the exception of Hamburg, all large and most medium-sized German cities maintain light rail networks.

The concept of a "limited tramway" was proposed by American transport planner H. Dean Quinby in 1962. Quinby distinguished this new concept in rail transportation from historic streetcar or tram systems as:
 * having the capacity to carry more passengers
 * operating with "three-section, articulated" transit vehicles
 * having more doors to facilitate full utilization of the space
 * faster and quieter in operation

The term light rail transit was introduced in North America in 1972 to describe this new concept of rail transportation. Prior to that time the abbreviation "LRT" was used for "Light Rapid Transit" and "Light Rail Rapid Transit".

The first of the new light rail systems in North America began operation in 1978 when the Canadian city of Edmonton, Alberta, adopted the German Siemens-Duewag U2 system, followed three years later by CTrain Calgary, Alberta, and San Diego, California. The concept proved popular, and there are now at least 30 light rail systems in the United States and over 40 in North America.

Britain began replacing its run-down local railways with light rail in the 1980s, starting with the Tyne and Wear Metro and followed by the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) in London. The historic term light railway was used because it dated from the British Light Railways Act 1896, although the technology used in the DLR system was at the high end of what Americans considered to be light rail. The trend to light rail in the United Kingdom was firmly established with the success of the Manchester Metrolink system, which opened in 1992.

Definition
The term light rail was coined in 1972 by the U.S. Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA; the precursor to the Federal Transit Administration) to describe new streetcar transformations that were taking place in Europe and the United States. In Germany, the term Stadtbahn (to be distinguished from S-Bahn, which stands for Stadtschnellbahn) was used to describe the concept, and many in UMTA wanted to adopt the direct translation, which is city rail (the Norwegian term, by bane, means the same). However, UMTA finally adopted the term light rail instead. Light in this context is used in the sense of "intended for light loads and fast movement", rather than referring to physical weight. The infrastructure investment is also usually lighter than would be found for a heavy rail system.

The Transportation Research Board (Transportation Systems Center) defined "light rail" in 1977 as "a mode of urban transportation utilizing predominantly reserved but not necessarily grade-separated rights-of-way. Electrically propelled rail vehicles operate singly or in trains. LRT provides a wide range of passenger capabilities and performance characteristics at moderate costs."

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA), in its Glossary of Transit Terminology, defines light rail as: "...a mode of transit service (also called streetcar, tramway, or trolley) operating passenger rail cars singly (or in short, usually two-car or three-car, trains) on fixed rails in the right-of-way that is often separated from other traffic for part or much of the way. Light rail vehicles are typically driven electrically with power being drawn from an overhead electric line via a trolley [pole] or a pantograph; driven by an operator onboard the vehicle; and may have either high platform loading or low-level boarding using steps.'" However, some diesel-powered transit is designated light rail, such as the O-Train Trillium Line in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, the River Line in New Jersey, United States, and the Sprinter in California, United States, which use diesel multiple unit (DMU) cars.

Light rail is similar to the British English term light railway, long-used to distinguish railway operations carried out under a less rigorous set of regulations using lighter equipment at lower speeds from mainline railways. Light rail is a generic international English phrase for types of rail systems using modern streetcars/trams, which means more or less the same thing throughout the English-speaking world.

People movers and personal rapid transit are even "lighter", at least in terms of capacity. Monorail is a separate technology that has been more successful in specialized services than in a commuter transit role.

British English versus American English
The use of the generic term light rail avoids some serious incompatibilities between British and American English. The word tram, for instance, is generally used in the UK and many former British colonies to refer to what is known in North America as a streetcar, but in North America tram can instead refer to an aerial tramway, or, in the case of the Disney amusement parks, even a land train. (The usual British term for an aerial tramway is cable car, which in the US usually refers to a ground-level car pulled along by subterranean cables.) The word trolley is often used as a synonym for streetcar in the United States but is usually taken to mean a cart, particularly a shopping cart, in the UK and elsewhere. Many North American transportation planners reserve streetcar for traditional vehicles that operate exclusively in mixed traffic on city streets, while they use light rail to refer to more modern vehicles operating mostly in exclusive rights of way, since they may operate both side-by-side targeted at different passenger groups.

The difference between British English and American English terminology arose in the late 19th century when Americans adopted the term "street railway", rather than "tramway", with the vehicles being called "streetcars" rather than "trams". Some have suggested that the Americans' preference for the term "street railway" at that time was influenced by German emigrants to the United States (who were more numerous than British immigrants in the industrialized Northeast), as it is the same as the German term for the mode, Straßenbahn (meaning "street railway"). A further difference arose because, while Britain abandoned all of its trams after World War II except in Blackpool, eight major North American cities (Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Newark, Cleveland, and New Orleans) continued to operate large streetcar systems. When these cities upgraded to new technology, they called it light rail to differentiate it from their existing streetcars since some continued to operate both the old and new systems. Since the 1980s, Portland, Oregon, has built all three types of system: a high-capacity light rail system in dedicated lanes and rights-of-way, a low-capacity streetcar system integrated with street traffic, and an aerial tram system.

The opposite phrase heavy rail, used for higher-capacity, higher-speed systems, also avoids some incompatibilities in terminology between British and American English, for instance in comparing the London Underground and the New York City Subway. Conventional rail technologies including high-speed, freight, commuter, and rapid transit urban transit systems are considered "heavy rail". The main difference between light rail and heavy rail rapid transit is the ability for a light rail vehicle to operate in mixed traffic if the routing requires it.

Types
Due to varying definitions, it is hard to distinguish between what is called light rail, and other forms of urban and commuter rail. A system described as a light rail in one city may be considered to be a streetcar or tram system in another. Conversely, some lines that are called "light rail" are very similar to rapid transit; in recent years, new terms such as light metro have been used to describe these medium-capacity systems. Some "light rail" systems, such as Sprinter, bear little similarity to urban rail, and could alternatively be classified as commuter rail or even inter-city rail. In the United States, "light rail" has become a catch-all term to describe a wide variety of passenger rail systems.

There is a significant difference in cost between these different classes of light rail transit. Tram-like systems are often less expensive than metro-like systems by a factor of two or more.

Lower capacity
The most difficult distinction to draw is that between light rail and streetcar or tram systems. There is a significant amount of overlap between the technologies, many of the same vehicles can be used for either, and it is common to classify streetcars or trams as a subcategory of light rail rather than as a distinct type of transportation. The two general versions are:
 * 1) The traditional type, where tracks and trains run along the streets and share space with road traffic. Stops tend to be very frequent, but little effort is made to set up special stations. Because space is shared, the tracks are usually visually unobtrusive.
 * 2) DulwichGroveStop.jpg runs on dedicated tracks, mostly along a former heavy rail corridor.]]A more modern variation, where the trains tend to run along with their own right-of-way, separated from road traffic. Stops are generally less frequent, and the vehicles are often boarded from a platform. Tracks are highly visible, and in some cases, significant effort is expended to keep traffic away through the use of special signaling, level crossings with gate arms, or even a complete separation (semi-metro) with non-level crossings.

Higher capacity
At the highest degree of separation, it can be difficult to draw the line between light rail and metros. The London Docklands Light Railway would likely not be considered as "light rail" were it not for the contrast between it and the rapid transit London Underground. In Europe and Asia, the term light rail is increasingly used to describe any rapid transit system with a fairly low frequency or short trains compared to heavier mass rapid systems such as the London Underground or Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit. However, upon closer inspection, these systems are better classified as light metro or people movers. For instance, Line 1 and Line 3 in Manila are often referred to as "light rail", despite being fully segregated, mostly elevated railways. This phenomenon is quite common in East Asian cities, where elevated metro lines in Shanghai, Wuhan, and Dalian in China; and Jakarta, Greater Jakarta and Palembang in Indonesia are called light rail lines. In North America, such systems are not usually considered light rail.

Mixed systems
Many systems have mixed characteristics. Indeed, with proper engineering, a rail line could run along a street, then go underground, and then run along an elevated viaduct. For example, the Los Angeles Metro Rail's A Line "light rail" has sections that could alternatively be described as a tramway, a light metro, and, in a narrow sense, rapid transit. This is especially common in the United States, where there is not a popularly perceived distinction between these different types of urban rail systems. The development of technology for low-floor and catenary-free trams facilitates the construction of such mixed systems with only short and shallow underground sections below critical intersections as the required clearance height can be reduced significantly compared to conventional light rail vehicles.

Speed and stop frequency

In some areas, "light rail" may also refer to any rail line with frequent low speeds or many stops in a short distance. This inherits the old definition of light railway in the UK. Hong Kong's Light Rail is an example of this, although it is also called "light rail" because it is a lower-scale system than the rest of the MTR. Sprinter in the San Diego area uses DMUs and is targeted towards a commuter rail audience; however, because of the large number of stops along the line, it is called the light rail.

Reference speed from major light rail systems, including station stop time, is shown below. However, low top speed is not always a differentiating characteristic between light rail and other systems. For example, the Siemens S70 LRVs used in the Houston METRORail and other North American LRT systems have a top speed of 55-71.5 mph depending on the system, while the trains on the all-underground Montreal Metro can only reach a top speed of 72 km/h. LACMTA light rail vehicles have higher top and average speeds than Montreal Metro or New York City Subway trains. The main difference is that Montreal Metro and New York City Subway trains carry far more passengers than any North American LRT system, and the trains have faster acceleration, making station-to-station times relatively short in their densely populated urban areas. Most light rail systems serve less densely populated cities and suburbs where passenger traffic is not high, but low cost combined with high top speed may be important to compete with automobiles.

System-wide considerations
Many light rail systems—even fairly old ones—have a combination of both on- and off-road sections. In some countries (especially in Europe), only the latter is described as light rail. In those places, trams running on mixed rights-of-way are not regarded as a light rail but considered distinctly as streetcars or trams. However, the requirement for saying that a rail line is "separated" can be quite low—sometimes just with concrete "buttons" to discourage automobile drivers from getting onto the tracks. Some systems such as Seattle's Link had on-road mixed sections but were closed to regular road traffic, with light rail vehicles and traditional buses both operating along a common right-of-way (however, Link converted to full separation in 2019).

Some systems, such as the AirTrain JFK in New York City, the DLR in London, and Kelana Jaya Line in Kuala Lumpur, have dispensed with the need for an operator. The Vancouver SkyTrain was an early adopter of driverless vehicles, while the Toronto Scarborough rapid transit operated the same trains as Vancouver, but used drivers. In most discussions and comparisons, these specialized systems are generally not considered light rail but as light metro systems.

Track gauge
Historically, the track gauge has had considerable variations, with narrow gauge common in many early systems. However, most light rail systems are now standard gauge. Older standard-gauge vehicles could not negotiate sharp turns as easily as narrow-gauge ones, but modern light rail systems achieve tighter turning radii by using articulated cars. An important advantage of the standard gauge is that standard railway maintenance equipment can be used on it, rather than custom-built machinery. Using standard gauges also allows light rail vehicles to be conveniently moved around using the same tracks as freight railways. Additionally, wider gauges (e.g. standard gauge) provide more floor clearance on low-floor trams that have constricted pedestrian areas at the wheels, which is especially important for wheelchair access, as narrower gauges (e.g. metre gauge) can make it challenging or impossible to pass the tram's wheels. Furthermore, standard-gauge rolling stock can be switched between networks either temporarily or permanently, and both newly built and used standard-gauge rolling stock tends to be cheaper to buy, as more companies offer such vehicles.

Efficiency
Energy efficiency for light rail may be 120 passenger miles per gallon of fuel (or equivalent), but variation is great, depending on circumstances.

Comparison with high capacity roads
One line of light rail (requires 7.6 m, 25' right of way) has a theoretical capacity of up to 8 times more than one 3.7 m (12 foot) lane on a freeway, excluding busses, during peak times. Roads have ultimate capacity limits that can be determined by traffic engineering, and usually experience a chaotic breakdown inflow and a dramatic drop in speed (a traffic jam) if they exceed about 2,000 vehicles per hour per lane (each car roughly two seconds behind another). Since most people who drive to work or on business trips do so alone, studies show that the average car occupancy on many roads carrying commuters is only about 1.5 people per car during the high-demand rush hour periods of the day. This combination of factors limits roads carrying only automobile commuters to a maximum observed capacity of about 3,000 passengers per hour per lane. The problem can be mitigated by introducing high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and ride-sharing programs, but in most cases, policymakers have chosen to add more lanes to the roads, despite a small risk that in unfavorable situations an extension of the road network might lead to increased travel times (Downs–Thomson paradox, Braess paradox).

By contrast, light rail vehicles can travel in multi-car trains carrying a theoretical ridership up to 20,000 passengers per hour in much narrower rights-of-way, not much more than two car lanes wide for a double track system. They can often be run through existing city streets and parks, or placed in the medians of roads. If run in streets, trains are usually limited by city block lengths to about four 180-passenger vehicles (720 passengers). Operating on two-minute headways using traffic signal progression, a well-designed two-track system can handle up to 30 trains per hour per track, achieving peak rates of over 20,000 passengers per hour in each direction. More advanced systems with separate rights-of-way using moving block signaling can exceed 25,000 passengers per hour per track.

Practical considerations
Most light rail systems in the United States are limited by demand rather than capacity (by and large, most American LRT systems carry fewer than 4,000 persons per hour per direction), but Boston's and San Francisco's light rail lines carry 9,600 and 13,100 passengers per hour per track during rush hour. Elsewhere in North America, the Calgary C-Train and Monterrey Metro have higher light rail ridership than Boston or San Francisco. Systems outside North America often have much higher passenger volumes. The Manila Light Rail Transit System is one of the highest capacity ones, having been upgraded in a series of expansions to handle 40,000 passengers per hour per direction, and having carried as many as 582,989 passengers in a single day on its Line 1. It achieves this volume by running four-car trains with a capacity of up to 1,350 passengers each at a frequency of up to 30 trains per hour. However, the Manila light rail system has full grade separation and as a result, has many of the operating characteristics of a metro system rather than a light rail system. A capacity of 1,350 passengers per train is more similar to the heavy rail than light rail.

Bus rapid transit (BRT) is an alternative to LRT and many planning studies undertake a comparison of each mode when considering appropriate investments in transit corridor development. BRT systems can exhibit a more diverse range of design characteristics than LRT, depending on the demand and constraints that exist, and BRT using dedicated lanes can have a theoretical capacity of over 30,000 passengers per hour per direction (for example, the Guangzhou Bus Rapid Transit system operates up to 350 buses per hour per direction). For the effective operation of a bus or BRT system, buses must have priority at traffic lights and have their dedicated lanes, especially as bus frequencies exceed 30 buses per hour per direction. The higher theoretical of BRT relates to the ability of buses to travel closer to each other than rail vehicles and their ability to overtake each other at designated locations allowing express services to bypass those that have stopped at stations. However, to achieve capacities this high, BRT station footprints need to be significantly larger than a typical LRT station. In terms of cost of operation, each bus vehicle requires a single driver, whereas a light rail train may have three to four cars of much larger capacity in one train under the control of one driver, or no driver at all in fully automated systems, increasing the labor costs of BRT systems compared to LRT systems. BRT systems are also usually less fuel-efficient as they use non-electrified vehicles.

The peak passenger capacity per lane per hour depends on which types of vehicles are allowed on the roads. Typically roadways have 1,900 passenger cars per lane per hour (pcplph). If only cars are allowed, the capacity will be less and will not increase when the traffic volume increases.

When there is a bus driving on this route, the capacity of the lane will be higher and will increase when the traffic level increases. And because the capacity of a light rail system is higher than that of a bus, there will be even more capacity when there is a combination of cars and light rail. Table 3 shows an example of peak passenger capacity.

Safety
An analysis of data from the 505-page National Transportation Statistics report published by the US Department of Transportation shows that light rail fatalities are higher than all other forms of transportation except motorcycle travel (31.5 fatalities per 100 million miles).

However, the National Transportation Statistics report published by the US Department of Transportation states that: "Caution must be exercised in comparing fatalities across modes because significantly different definitions are used. In particular, Rail and Transit fatalities include incident-related (as distinct from accident-related) fatalities, such as fatalities from falls in transit stations or railroad employee fatalities from a fire in a workshed. Equivalent fatalities for the Air and Highway modes (fatalities at airports not caused by moving aircraft or fatalities from accidents in automobile repair shops) are not counted toward the totals for these modes. Thus, fatalities not necessarily directly related to in-service transportation are counted for the transit and rail modes, potentially overstating the risk for these modes."

Construction and operation costs
The cost of light rail construction varies widely, largely depending on the amount of tunneling and elevated structures required. A survey of North American light rail projects shows that costs of most LRT systems range from $15 million to over $100 million per mile. Seattle's new light rail system is by far the most expensive in the US, at $179 million per mile, since it includes extensive tunneling in poor soil conditions, elevated sections, and stations as deep as 180 ft below ground level. This results in costs more typical of subways or rapid transit systems than light rail. At the other end of the scale, four systems (Baltimore, Maryland; Camden, New Jersey; Sacramento, California; and Salt Lake City, Utah) incurred construction costs of less than $20 million per mile. Over the US as a whole, excluding Seattle, new light rail construction costs average about $35 million per mile.

By comparison, a freeway lane expansion typically costs $1.0 million to $8.5 million per lane mile for two directions, with an average of $2.3 million. However, freeways are frequently built in suburbs or rural areas, whereas light rail tends to be concentrated in urban areas, where right of way and property acquisition is expensive. Similarly, the most expensive US highway expansion project was the "Big Dig" in Boston, Massachusetts, which cost $200 million per lane mile for a total cost of $14.6 billion. A light rail track can carry up to 20,000 people per hour as compared with 2,000–2,200 vehicles per hour for one freeway lane. For example, in Boston and San Francisco, light rail lines carry 9,600 and 13,100 passengers per hour, respectively, in the peak direction during rush hour.

Combining highway expansion with LRT construction can save costs by doing both highway improvements and rail construction at the same time. As an example, Denver's Transportation Expansion Project rebuilt interstate highways 25 and 225 and added a light rail expansion for a total cost of $1.67 billion over five years. The cost of 17 mi of highway improvements and 19 mi of double-track light rail worked out to $19.3 million per highway lane-mile and $27.6 million per LRT track-mile. The project came in under budget and 22 months ahead of schedule.

LRT cost efficiency improves dramatically as ridership increases, as can be seen from the numbers above: the same rail line, with similar capital and operating costs, is far more efficient if it is carrying 20,000 people per hour than if it is carrying 2,400. The Calgary, Alberta, C-Train used many common light rail techniques to keep costs low, including minimizing underground and elevated trackage, sharing transit malls with buses, leasing rights-of-way from freight railroads, and combining LRT construction with freeway expansion. As a result, Calgary ranks toward the less expensive end of the scale with capital costs of around $24 million per mile.

However, Calgary's LRT ridership is much higher than any comparable US light rail system, at 300,000 passengers per weekday, and as a result, its capital efficiency is also much higher. Its capital costs were one-third those of the San Diego Trolley, a comparably sized US system built at the same time, while by 2009 its ridership was approximately three times as high. Thus, Calgary's capital cost per passenger was much lower than that of San Diego. Its operating cost per passenger was also much lower because of its higher ridership. A typical C-Train vehicle costs only CA$163 per hour to operate, and since it averages 600 passengers per operating hour, Calgary Transit estimates that its LRT operating costs are only 27 cents per ride, versus $1.50 per ride on its buses.

Compared to buses, costs can be lower due to lower labor costs per passenger mile, higher ridership (observations show that light rail attracts more ridership than a comparable bus service) and faster average speed (reducing the number of vehicles needed for the same service frequency). While light rail vehicles are more expensive to buy, they have a longer useful life than buses, sometimes making for lower life-cycle costs. Compared to heavy rail investment costs are lower, however operating costs are higher than heavy rail.

Integration with bicycles
Light rail lines have various policies on bicycles. Some fleets restrict bicycles on trains during peak hours. Some light rail systems, such as the St. Louis MetroLink, allow bicycles on the trains, but only in the rear sections of cars. Some light rail lines, like San Francisco's, allow only folding bicycles on board. Some light rail systems, such as the MAX in Portland, have dedicated bike storage, either with dedicated hooks or spaces within train cars. some systems, dedicated bike parking is available at select stations and others are integrated with local bike share systems.

Trams operating on mainline railways
Around Karlsruhe, Kassel, and Saarbrücken in Germany, dual-voltage light rail trains partly use mainline railroad tracks, sharing these tracks with heavy rail trains. In the Netherlands, this concept was first applied on the RijnGouweLijn. This allows commuters to ride directly into the city center, rather than taking a mainline train only as far as a central station and then having to change to a tram. In France, similar tram-trains are planned for Paris, Mulhouse, and Strasbourg; further projects exist. In some cases, tram trains use previously abandoned or lightly used heavy rail lines in addition to or instead of still in use mainline tracks. In 2022, Spain opened the Cádiz TramBahia, where trams share track with commuter and long-distance trains from the main terminus in the city and curve off to serve cities without a railway connection.

Some of the issues involved in such schemes are:
 * compatibility of the safety systems
 * power supply of the track to the power used by the vehicles (frequently different voltages, rarely third rail vs overhead wires)
 * width of the vehicles to the position of the platforms
 * height of the platforms

There is a history of what would now be considered light rail vehicles operating on heavy rail rapid transit tracks in the US, especially in the case of interurban streetcars. Notable examples are Lehigh Valley Transit trains running on the Philadelphia and Western Railroad high-speed third rail line (now the Norristown High-Speed Line). Such arrangements are almost impossible now, due to the Federal Railroad Administration refusing (for crash safety reasons) to allow non-FRA compliant railcars (i.e., subway and light rail vehicles) to run on the same tracks at the same times as compliant railcars, which includes locomotives and standard railroad passenger and freight equipment. Notable exceptions in the US are the NJ Transit River Line from Camden to Trenton and Austin's Capital MetroRail, which have received exemptions to the provision that light rail operations occur only during daytime hours and Conrail freight service only at night, with several hours separating one operation from the other. The O-Train Trillium Line in Ottawa also has freight service at certain hours.

Ground-level power supply for trams
When electric streetcars were introduced in the late 19th century, conduit current collection was one of the first ways of supplying power, but it proved to be much more expensive, complicated, and trouble-prone than overhead wires. When electric street railways became ubiquitous, conduit power was used in those cities that did not permit overhead wires. In Europe, it was used in London, Paris, Berlin, Marseille, Budapest, and Prague. In the United States, it was used in parts of New York City and Washington, D.C. Third rail technology was investigated for use on the Gold Coast of Australia for the G:link light rail, though power from overhead lines was ultimately utilized for that system.

In the French city of Bordeaux, the tramway network is powered by a third rail in the city center, where the tracks are not always segregated from pedestrians and cars. The third rail (actually two closely spaced rails) is placed in the middle of the track and divided into eight-metre sections, each of which is powered only while it is completely covered by a tram. This minimizes the risk of a person or animal coming into contact with a live rail. In outer areas, the trams switch to conventional overhead wires. The Bordeaux power system costs about three times as much as a conventional overhead wire system and took 24 months to achieve acceptable levels of reliability, requiring the replacement of all the main cables and power supplies. Operating and maintenance costs of the innovative power system still remain high. However, despite numerous service outages, the system was a success with the public, gaining up to 190,000 passengers per day.

Comparison to other rail transit modes
With its mix of right-of-way types and train control technologies, LRT offers the widest range of latitude of any rail system in the design, engineering, and operating practices. The challenge in designing light rail systems is to realize the potential of LRT to provide fast, comfortable service while avoiding the tendency to overdesign that results in excessive capital costs beyond what is necessary to meet the public's needs.

Typical rolling stock
The BART railcar in the following chart is not generally considered to be a "light rail" vehicle (it is a heavy rail vehicle), and is only included for comparison purposes.

Train operation
An important factor crucial to LRT is the train operator. Unlike rail rapid transit, which can travel unattended under automatic train operation (ATO), safe, high-quality LRT operation relies on a human operator as a key element. The reason that the operator is so important is that the train tracks often share the streets with automobiles, other vehicles, and pedestrians. If trains were fully automated on roads, nobody would be there to stop the train if a car pulled in front of it. Light rail trains are very sturdily built for passenger safety, and to reduce damage from impacts with cars.

Floor height
The latest generation of LRVs has the advantage of partially or fully low-floor design, with the floor of the vehicles only 300 to 360 mm above the top of the rail, a feature not found in either rapid rail transit vehicles or streetcars. This allows them to load passengers, including those in wheelchairs or strollers, directly from low-rise platforms that are little more than raised sidewalks. This satisfies requirements to provide access to disabled passengers without using expensive and delay-inducing wheelchair lifts, while also making boarding faster and easier for other passengers.

Power sources
Overhead lines supply electricity to the vast majority of light rail systems. This avoids the danger of passengers stepping on an electrified third rail. The Docklands Light Railway uses an inverted third rail for its electrical power, which allows the electrified rail to be covered and the power drawn from the underside. Trams in Bordeaux, France, use a special third-rail configuration where the power is only switched on beneath the trams, making it safe on city streets. Several systems in Europe and a few recently opened systems in North America use diesel-powered trains.

Tram and other light rail transit systems worldwide
Around the world, there are many extant tram and streetcar systems. Some date from the beginning of the 20th century or earlier such as Toronto streetcar system, but many of the original tram and streetcar systems were closed down in the mid-20th century, except for many Eastern European countries. Even though many systems closed down over the years, there are still several tram systems that have been operating much as they did when they were first built over a century ago. Some cities (such as Los Angeles and Jersey City) that once closed down their streetcar networks are now restoring, or have already rebuilt, at least some of their former streetcar/tram systems. Most light rail services are currently committed to articulated vehicles like modern LRVs, i.e. trams, except for large underground metro or rapid transit systems.

Several UK cities have substantial light rail networks including the Nottingham Express Transit, Sheffield Supertram, Manchester Metrolink.

A smaller network between Birmingham and The Black Country (West Midlands Metro), with plans to add 6 new lines and extend out to Stourbridge, Birmingham Airport & Walsall. Edinburgh Trams is also a single line route, currently looking to add other lines.

title: Light rail


text:
Talk:Light rail

Cleveland?
In Cleveland, we have two rail systems, referred to as heavy and light. The former is post-war construction; the latter is 1920s construction to support real estate developers (who incidentally bought a controlling interest in the Nickel Plate RR to support their efforts).

Does that qualify? Is it not listed because it's nearly a century old on a fifty year old concept, or just because nobody has bothered? Snile (talk) 11:49, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Added it to the appropriate passage; don't know why it was left off, but Cleveland's Green and Blue Lines totally fit the description of pre-World War II streetcars that were upgraded to modern standards over the years. oknazevad (talk) 14:35, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Lead
"[…] tram […] is a form of tramway […] that constitutes a form of tram."

Perhaps we could find a better way to phrase that? Cheers ⌘  hugarheimur 18:32, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
 * That terrible wording crept in through some bad rewrites in September that plainly ignore that tram (aka streetcar or trolley) has a separate article. I restored the older version of the lead. oknazevad (talk) 21:03, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Tyne & Wear Metro
I think the Tyne and Wear Metro Should not be include in Light Rail & instead Commuter rail because it better follows the requirement's to be a commuter rail instead of Light Rail. Also the Tyne & Wear Metro only has level crossing which are at about Right Angles to the Road. Also the Tyne & Wear Metro get's some quite heavy freight trains heading to/from Drax Power Station & Tyne Dock running on the same track as the Tyne & Wear Metro. I Like The british Rail Class 483 (talk) 16:49, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

 * You may be right, especially after the old stock (based on type B trams/LRVs) will be phased out by 2025. KatVanHuis (talk) 18:39, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

'Light rail' versus 'light rail transit'
The most WP:COMMON NAME is 'light rail'. I am happy for 'light rail transit' to be mentioned too, but it must be afterwards. Will Thorpe (talk) 13:25, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I propose merging Semi-metro into Light rail. The distinction between semi-metro and light rail systems is often minimal and can significantly overlap.

Consolidating both topics under one article would enhance clarity and streamline information for readers interested in urban transit systems.

Rationale

 * 1) Minimal Distinction: Semi-metro systems, characterized by sections of independent right-of-way, are a significant aspect of light rail networks globally. This integration reflects a widespread practice across many light rail systems, making it practical to discuss these systems together.
 * 2) Merging Semi-metro into Light rail will provide readers with a comprehensive overview of all aspects of light rail systems, including those with semi-metro characteristics. This approach avoids redundancy and provides a unified resource for understanding urban transit.
 * 3) Maintaining separate articles for semi-metro and light rail can lead to confusion due to their similar operational and infrastructural features. Consolidation will clarify terminology and improve the coherence of information presented.
 * 4) A single, consolidated article reduces maintenance overhead and ensures that updates and improvements are applied uniformly. It also avoids duplication of effort across related topics.
 * 5) Readers interested in semi-metro systems could find a dedicated section within the Light rail article, if necessary, for accessibility and usability without the need to navigate between multiple articles.
 * 6) Language Pages: The language pages linked to Semi-metro often cover different topics or were created by the initial same user, suggesting redundancy or a personal drive for the page to exist.
 * 7) The term 'semi-metro' is not widely recognized in major dictionaries and has limited search engine results beyond this Wikipedia page, indicating its specialized usage within transit terminology.

Do please share your thoughts on this proposal. Lea 4545 (talk) 14:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

 * It may be no surprise that I oppose; but thanks for the invite to share my thoughts.
 * 1. The distinction between light rail and semi-metro is that both have different definitions; light rail being the broader one. Light rail expert Vuchic describes three levels of right of way:
 * A. street running
 * B. separate right of way (not independent/with level road-crossings)
 * C. independent right of way (conflict free/without level road-crossings)
 * Having category A defines tram. Having also category B defines light rail. Having also category C defines semi-metro (as part of light trail).
 * 2. We could also merge light rail with public transport to create an even more comprehensive article. But that would make it too long, right? In this case, the semi-metro article isn't finished yet. Especially the history section needs to be expanded, but also a few others.
 * 3. Their operation is indeed similar; being tram-like vehicles. But their infrastructure in different; semi-metro uses tunnels and viaducts just like a metro.
 * 4. Currently I don't see much duplication.
 * 5. Isn't it a big pro of Wikipedia over paper encyclopedias to have easy navigation by clicking only once, instead of turning many pages?
 * 6. As far as I can tell all the language pages cover the same phenomenon. Besides that: I have only created one other language page, which is not even the most extensive language version.
 * 7. Most importantly: the semi-metro article uses reliable and independent sources. Even if semi-metro might be specialised transit terminology, many Wikipedia articles focus on either mathematical, biological or astronomical terms not found in a dictionary. I think it's a good custom to include specialised terms. KatVanHuis (talk) 21:34, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Merge
 * I would like to support the proposal to merge the Semi-metro article into the Light rail article. There is no distinct need to have this page when there are already pages for Premetro and light rail.
 * Overlap: “Semi-metro” describes a type of light rail system with both dedicated and shared tracks, making it a term within the light rail category rather than a distinct type. Merging the articles will better place this information under light rail.
 * Better Information: Combining the Semi-metro article with Light rail will provide a single, comprehensive resource for light rail systems, including those termed with 'semi-metro' features.
 * Terminology: “Semi-metro” seems to be a specific term used in some papers for describing light rail systems with certain characteristics, but not a separate category from Light rail. It seems to be a term that has emerged from particular contributors who are trying to use Wikipedia to broaden its popularity, rather than a widely recognized and distinct classification.
 * Language Pages: Some of the linked language pages discuss trams in tunnels but don’t mention “semi-metro,” in any form at all.
 *  Propose:
 * Merge the relevant content from the Semi-metro article into the Light rail article. Perhaps by establishing a new section within Light rail, or by including the 'three levels of right of way' as mentioned above. Detail how some light rail systems incorporate features typically associated with the term “semi-metro,” such as tunnels and viaducts. This approach will provide readers with a more unified understanding of how these systems fit into the light rail category. The proposal to merge of light rail with public transport to create an 'even more comprehensive article' seems facetious.
 * Key Information: Any unique and valuable information from the 'semi-metro' page, such as significant historical details and notable examples should be preserved in the merged article. The reliable and independent sources from the semi-metro article should, of course, be retained in the merge to Light rail.
 * Terminology: The Light rail article could be updated to reflect that “semi-metro” is a term sometimes used to describe specific configurations within light rail systems. This update will clarify that the term denotes certain characteristics of light rail rather than a distinct type of transit.
 * Document the Merge: The rationale and details of the merge should be documented on the talk pages. KatVanHuis, with their expertise, could be well placed to ensure accurate integration of content.
 * Qpwoeizmxn (talk) 10:30, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you @Qpwoeizmxn for your extensive reply. Some remarks from my side.
 * You're on spot; the idea to merge light rail with public transport to create an 'even more comprehensive article' was intended to be somewhat facetious.
 * Indeed, some of the linked language pages discuss trams in tunnels but don’t mention the term “semi-metro”. But that's because the term simply doesn't exist in that language. Even in the USA, the term “subway-surface line” is still often used. Many former Soviet Union countries prefer the term “Metrotram”. >> Similarly the term “metro” isn't used in all countries: in the USA “Rapid Transit” is preferred, in London they say “Underground”, Germans almost always use “U-bahn”. But despite all those different names, the same definition applies to the term “metro”.
 * I agree with your remark: “Semi-metro” describes a type of light rail system with both dedicated and shared tracks, making it a term within the light rail category rather than a distinct type. However, exactly the same could be said about Tram-train. In short: semi-metro is a type of light rail partly using metro-infrastructure and Tram-train is a type of light rail partly using train-infrastructure. Would you consider to merge "Tram-train" into "light rail" as well?
 * About terminology: Wikipedia doesn't necessarily describes popular terms, but does decribe notable terms. Again: Wikipedia also describes many mathematical, biological or astronomical terms. Most of them are not popular in any way. Wikipedia is not a popularity contest.
 * KatVanHuis (talk) 17:50, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps if the article were to be merged, it should be merged with pre-metro instead? Seems at a glance like a closer fit. Cheers, Will Thorpe (talk) 01:24, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Light rail


text:
Streetcar (disambiguation)

A streetcar, street car, or tram is a vehicle that travels on rails, typically in a street.

This may also refer to:

Transport

 * Light rail vehicles that may also travel on streets
 * Heritage streetcar, contemporary streetcar lines that use old-fashioned streetcars
 * Wright StreetCar, a bus designed to have a tram-like appearance
 * Streetcar (carsharing), the UK car club acquired by Zipcar in 2010

Music

 * "Street Car", a song by Canadian musician Hayden from his 2002 album Skyscraper National Park
 * "Streetcar (song)", a song by Funeral for a Friend from their 2005 album Hours
 * "Streetcar (Daniel Caesar song)", a song by Daniel Caesar from his 2015 extended play Pilgrim's Paradise

title: Streetcar (disambiguation)


text:
Trolley

Trolley may refer to:

Vehicles and components

 * Tram, or trolley or streetcar, a rail vehicle that runs on tramway tracks
 * Trolleybus, or trolley, an electric bus drawing power from overhead wires using trolley poles
 * Trolleytruck, a trolleybus-like vehicle used for carrying cargo
 * Tourist trolley, a rubber-tired bus designed to resemble an old-style streetcar or tram
 * Trolley (horse-drawn), a goods vehicle with four wheels of equal size mounted underneath it
 * Rail push trolley, a small vehicle for inspecting rail lines

Tools

 * Airline service trolley, a small serving cart used by flight attendants inside an aircraft
 * Boat dolly, or trolley, a device for launching small boats into the water
 * Creeper (tool), a low-profile, wheeled platform used by auto mechanics
 * Flatbed trolley, or dray, for freight transport in distribution environments
 * Piano trolley, a device for moving pianos
 * Golf trolley, a trolley designed for carrying a golf equipment
 * Laptop charging trolley, a device for charging mobile computers
 * Shopping cart, or trolley, a wheeled cart used by customers while shopping
 * Stretcher, an apparatus used for moving patients who require medical care

Other uses

 * Trolley station (UTA), a light rail station in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
 * San Diego Trolley, a light rail system in San Diego, California, U.S.
 * Trolley (TV series), a 2022 South Korean television series

title: Trolley


text:
Swan

Swans are birds of the genus Cygnus within the family Anatidae. The swans' closest relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae.

There are six living and many extinct species of swan; in addition, there is a species known as the coscoroba swan which is no longer considered one of the true swans. Swans usually mate for life, although separation sometimes occurs, particularly following nesting failure, and if a mate dies, the remaining swan will take up with another. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight.

Taxonomy and terminology
The genus Cygnus was introduced in 1764 by the French naturalist François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault. The English word swan, akin to the German Schwan, Dutch zwaan and Swedish svan, is derived from the Indo-European root (H) (to sound, to sing).

Young swan are known as cygnets, or, less commonly, as swanlings.     The former derives from Old French cigne or cisne (diminutive suffix et little), from the Latin word, a variant form of cycnus swan, itself from the Greek κύκνος kýknos, a word of the same meaning. An adult male is a cob, from Middle English cobbe (leader of a group); an adult female is a pen. A group of swans is called a bevy or a wedge.

Description
Swans are the largest extant members of the waterfowl family Anatidae and are among the largest flying birds. The largest living species, including the mute swan, trumpeter swan, and whooper swan, can reach a length of over 1.5 m and weigh over 15 kg. Their wingspans can be over 3.1 m. Compared to the closely related geese, they are much larger and have proportionally larger feet and necks. Adults also have a patch of unfeathered skin between the eyes and bill. The sexes are alike in plumage, but males are generally bigger and heavier than females. The biggest species of swan ever was the extinct Cygnus falconeri, a flightless giant swan known from fossils found on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Sicily. Its disappearance is thought to have resulted from extreme climate fluctuations or the arrival of superior predators and competitors.

The Northern Hemisphere species of swan have pure white plumage, but the Southern Hemisphere species are mixed black and white. The Australian black swan (Cygnus atratus) is completely black except for the white flight feathers on its wings; the chicks of black swans are light grey. The South American black-necked swan has a white body with a black neck.

The legs of most swans are typically a dark blackish-grey colour, except for the South American black-necked swan, which has pink legs. Bill colour varies: the four subarctic species have black bills with varying amounts of yellow, and all the others are patterned red and black. Although birds do not have teeth, swans, like other Anatidae, have beaks with serrated edges that look like small jagged "teeth" as part of their beaks used for catching and eating aquatic plants and algae, but also molluscs, small fish, frogs, and worms. In the mute swan and black-necked swan, both sexes have a fleshy lump at the base of their bills on the upper mandible, known as the knob, which is larger in males and is condition dependent, changing seasonally.

Distribution and movements
Swans are generally found in temperate environments, rarely occurring in the tropics. Four (or five) species occur in the Northern Hemisphere, one species is found in Australia, one extinct species was found in New Zealand and the Chatham Islands, and one species is distributed in southern South America. They are absent from tropical Asia, Central America, northern South America and the entirety of Africa. One species, the mute swan, has been introduced to North America, Australia and New Zealand.

Several species are migratory, either wholly or partly so. The mute swan is a partial migrant, being resident over areas of Western Europe but wholly migratory in Eastern Europe and Asia. The whooper swan and tundra swan are wholly migratory, and the trumpeter swans are almost entirely migratory. There is some evidence that the black-necked swan is migratory over part of its range, but detailed studies have not established whether these movements are long or short-range migration.

Behaviour
Swans feed in water and on land. They are almost entirely herbivorous, although they may eat small amounts of aquatic animals. In the water, food is obtained by up-ending or dabbling, and their diet is composed of the roots, tubers, stems and leaves of aquatic and submerged plants.

A familiar behaviour of swans is that they mate for life, and typically bond even before they reach sexual maturity. Trumpeter swans, for example, can live as long as 24 years and only start breeding at the age of 4–7, forming monogamous pair bonds as early as 20 months. "Divorce", though rare, does occur; one study of mute swans shows a 3% rate for pairs that breed successfully and 9% for pairs that do not. The pair bonds are maintained year-round, even in gregarious and migratory species like the tundra swan, which congregate in large flocks in the wintering grounds.

Swans' nests are on the ground near water and about a metre (3') across. Unlike many other ducks and geese, the male helps with the nest construction, and will also take turns incubating the eggs. Alongside the whistling ducks, swans are the only anatids that will do this. The average egg size (for the mute swan) is 113 × 74 mm ($4 1/2$ x 3 in), weighing 340 g (12 oz), in a clutch size of 4 to 7, and an incubation period of 34–45 days. Swans are highly protective of their nests. They will viciously attack anything that they perceive as a threat to their chicks, including humans. One man was suspected to have drowned in such an attack. Swans' intraspecific aggressive behaviour is shown more frequent than interspecific behaviour for food and shelter. The aggression with other species is shown more in tundra swans.

Systematics and evolution
Evidence suggests that the genus Cygnus evolved in Europe or western Eurasia during the Miocene, spreading all over the Northern Hemisphere until the Pliocene. When the southern species branched off is not known. The mute swan is closest to the Southern Hemisphere Cygnus; its habits of carrying the neck curved (not straight) and the wings fluffed (not flush) as well as its bill colour and knob indicate that its closest living relative is the black swan. Given the biogeography and appearance of the subgenus Olor, it seems likely that these are of a more recent origin, as evidenced shows by their modern ranges (which were mostly uninhabitable during the last ice age) and great similarity between the taxa.

Species
Genus Cygnus

The coscoroba swan (Coscoroba coscoroba) from South America, the only species in its genus, is not a true swan. Its phylogenetic position is not fully resolved; it is in some aspects more similar to geese and shelducks.

Fossil record

The fossil record of the genus Cygnus is quite impressive, although allocation to the subgenera is often tentative; as indicated above, at least the early forms probably belong to the C. olor – Southern Hemisphere lineage, whereas the Pleistocene taxa from North America would be placed in Olor. Several prehistoric species have been described, mostly from the Northern Hemisphere. In the Mediterranean, the leg bones of the giant swan (C. falconeri) were found on the islands of Malta and Sicily; it may have been over 2 metres from tail to bill, which was taller (though not heavier) than the contemporary local dwarf elephants (Palaeoloxodon falconeri).
 * Subgenus Chenopis
 * †New Zealand swan, Cygnus sumnerensis, an extinct species related to the black swan of Australia
 * Other subgenera (see above):
 * †Cygnus csakvarensis Lambrecht 1933 [Cygnus csákvárensis Lambrecht 1931a nomen nudum ; Cygnanser csakvarensis (Lambrecht 1933) Kretzoi 1957 ; Olor csakvarensis (Lambrecht 1933) Mlíkovský 1992b ] (Late Miocene of Hungary)
 * †Cygnus mariae Bickart 1990 (Early Pliocene of Wickieup, U.S.)
 * †Cygnus verae Boev 2000 (Early Pliocene of Sofia, Bulgaria)
 * †Cygnus liskunae (Kuročkin 1976) [Anser liskunae Kuročkin 1976 ] (Middle Pliocene of western Mongolia)
 * †Cygnus hibbardi Brodkorb 1958 (?Early Pleistocene of Idaho, U.S.)
 * †Cygnus sp. Louchart et al. 1998 (Early Pleistocene of Dursunlu, Turkey)
 * †Giant swan (Cygnus falconeri) Parker 1865 sensu Livezey 1997a [Cygnus melitensis Falconer 1868 ; Palaeocygnus falconeri (Parker 1865) Oberholser 1908 ] (Middle Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
 * †Cygnus paloregonus Cope 1878 [Anser condoni Schufeldt 1892 ; Cygnus matthewi Schufeldt 1913 ] (Middle Pleistocene of west-central U.S.)
 * †Dwarf swan (Cygnus equitum) Bate 1916 sensu Livezey 1997 [Anser equitum (Bate 1916) Brodkorb 1964 ; Cygnus (Olor) equitum Bate 1916 sensu Northcote 1988a ] (Middle – Late Pleistocene of Malta and Sicily, Mediterranean)
 * †Cygnus lacustris (De Vis 1905) [Archaeocycnus lacustris De Vis 1905 ] (Late Pleistocene of the Lake Eyre region, Australia)
 * †Cygnus sp. (Pleistocene of Australia)
 * †Cygnus atavus (Fraas 1870) Mlíkovský 1992 [Anas atava Fraas 1870 ; Anas cygniformis Fraas 1870 ; Palaelodus steinheimensis Fraas 1870 ; Anser atavus (Fraas 1870) Lambrecht 1933 ; Anser cygniformis (Fraas 1870) Lambrecht 1933 ]
 * Other genera
 * † Annakacygna

The supposed fossil swans "Cygnus" bilinicus and "Cygnus" herrenthalsi were, respectively, a stork and some large bird of unknown affinity (due to the bad state of preservation of the referred material).

European motifs
Many of the cultural aspects refer to the mute swan of Europe. Perhaps the best-known story about a swan is the fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling". Swans are often a symbol of love or fidelity because of their long-lasting, apparently monogamous relationships. See Wagner's famous swan-related operas Lohengrin and Parsifal.

As food
Swan meat was regarded as a luxury food in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. A recipe for baked swan survives from that time: "To bake a Swan Scald it and take out the bones, and parboil it, then season it very well with Pepper, Salt and Ginger, then lard it, and put it in a deep Coffin of Rye Paste with store of Butter, close it and bake it very well, and when it is baked, fill up the Vent-hole with melted Butter, and so keep it; serve it in as you do the Beef-Pie." Swans being raised for food were sometimes kept in swan pits.

The Illustrious Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady, a religious confraternity which existed in 's-Hertogenbosch in the late Middle Ages, had "sworn members", also called "swan-brethren" because they used to donate a swan for the yearly banquet.

Based on a mistaken belief that the British monarch owns all the swans in Britain, it is popularly believed the British monarch is the only person allowed to eat swans in the United Kingdom.

Ancient Greece and Rome
Swans feature strongly in mythology. In Greek mythology, the story of Leda and the Swan recounts that Helen of Troy was conceived in a union of Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, Queen of Sparta.

Other references in classical literature include the belief that, upon death, the mute swan would sing beautifully—hence the phrase swan song.

The mute swan is also one of the sacred birds of Apollo, whose associations stem both from the nature of the bird as a symbol of light, as well as the notion of a "swan song". The god is often depicted riding a chariot pulled by or composed of swans in his ascension from Delos.

In the second century, the Roman poet Juvenal made a sarcastic reference to a good woman being a "rare bird, as rare on earth as a black swan" (black swans being completely unknown in the Northern Hemisphere until Dutch explorers reached Australia in the 1600s), from which comes the Latin phrase  (rare bird).

Irish lore and poetry
The Irish legend of the Children of Lir is about a stepmother who transformed her children into swans for 900 years.

In the legend The Wooing of Etain the king of the Sidhe (subterranean-dwelling, supernatural beings) transforms himself and the most beautiful woman in Ireland, Etain, into swans to escape from the king of Ireland and Ireland's armies. The swan has recently been depicted on an Irish commemorative coin.

Swans are also present in Irish literature in the poetry of W. B. Yeats. "The Wild Swans at Coole" has a heavy focus on the mesmerising characteristics of the swan. Yeats also recounts the myth of Leda and the Swan in the poem of the same name.

Nordic lore
In Norse mythology, two swans drink from the sacred Well of Urd in the realm of Asgard, home of the gods. According to the Prose Edda, the water of this well is so pure and holy that all things that touch it turn white, including this original pair of swans and all others descended from them. The poem Volundarkvida, or the Lay of Volund, part of the Poetic Edda, also features swan maidens.

In the Finnish epic Kalevala, a swan lives in the Tuoni River located in Tuonela, the underworld realm of the dead. According to the story, whoever killed a swan would perish as well. Jean Sibelius composed the Lemminkäinen Suite based on the Kalevala, with the second piece entitled Swan of Tuonela (Tuonelan joutsen). Today, five flying swans are the symbol of the Nordic countries; the whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus) is the national bird of Finland; and the mute swan is the national bird of Denmark.

Swan Lake ballet
The ballet Swan Lake is among the most canonic of classical ballets. Based on the 1875–76 score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the most promulgated choreographic version was created by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov (1895), the premiere of which was danced by the Imperial Ballet at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. The ballet's lead dual roles of Odette (white swan)/Odile (black swan) represent good and evil and are among the most challenging roles created in Romantic classical ballet. The ballet is in the repertories of ballet companies around the world.

Christianity
A swan is one of the attributes of St. Hugh of Lincoln, based on the story of a swan who was devoted to him.

Spanish language literature
In Latin American literature, the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío (1867–1916) consecrated the swan as a symbol of artistic inspiration by drawing attention to the constancy of swan imagery in Western culture, beginning with the rape of Leda and ending with Wagner's Lohengrin. Darío's most famous poem in this regard is Blasón – "Coat of Arms" (1896), and his use of the swan made it a symbol for the Modernismo poetic movement that dominated Spanish language poetry from the 1880s until the First World War. Such was the dominance of Modernismo in Spanish language poetry that the Mexican poet Enrique González Martínez attempted to announce the end of Modernismo with a sonnet provocatively entitled, Tuércele el cuello al cisne – "Wring the Swan's Neck" (1910).

Hinduism
Swans are revered in Hinduism and are compared to saintly persons whose chief characteristic is to be in the world without getting attached to it, just as a swan's feather does not get wet although it is in water. The Sanskrit word for swan is hamsa and the "Raja Hamsam" or the Royal Swan is the vehicle of Devi Saraswati, which symbolises the Sattva Guna or purity par excellence. The swan, if offered a mixture of milk and water, is said to be able to drink the milk alone. Therefore, Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, is seen riding the swan because the swan thus symbolizes Viveka, i.e. prudence and discrimination between the good and the bad or between the eternal and the transient. This is seen as a great quality, as shown by this Sanskrit verse:

It is mentioned several times in the Vedic literature, and persons who have attained great spiritual capabilities are sometimes called Paramahamsa ("Supreme Swan") on account of their spiritual grace and ability to travel between various spiritual worlds. In the Vedas, swans are said to reside in the summer on Lake Manasarovar and migrate to Indian lakes for the winter. They are believed to possess some powers, such as the ability to eat pearls.

Indo-European religions
Swans are intimately associated with the divine twins in Indo-European religions, and it is thought that in Proto-Indo-European times, swans were a solar symbol associated with the divine twins and the original Indo-European sun goddess.

title: Swan


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Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 100 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Through the Phoenician alphabet's major child systems (the Greek and Aramaic scripts), the Egyptian hieroglyphic script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use, most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts (through Greek) and the Arabic script, and possibly the Brahmic family of scripts (through Aramaic, Phoenician, and Greek).

The use of hieroglyphic writing arose from proto-literate symbol systems in the Early Bronze Age, around the 33rd century BC (Naqada III), with the first decipherable sentence written in the Egyptian language dating to the Second Dynasty (28th century BC). Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature writing system used for monumental inscription in the classical language of the Middle Kingdom period; during this period, the system used about 900 distinct signs. The use of this writing system continued through the New Kingdom and Late Period, and on into the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, extending into the 4th century AD.

With the final closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost. Although attempts were made, the script remained undeciphered throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was finally accomplished in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, with the help of the Rosetta Stone.

The number of words contained in all Ancient Egyptian (i.e. hieroglyphic and hieratic) texts known today is approximately 5 million, and tends towards 10 million if counting duplicates (such as the Book of the Dead and the Coffin Texts) separately. The most complete compendium of Ancient Egyptian, Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, contains 1.5–1.7 million words.

Etymology
The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός (hieroglyphikos), a compound of ἱερός (hierós 'sacred') and γλύφω (glýphō '(Ι) carve, engrave'; see glyph) meaning sacred carving.

The glyphs themselves, since the Ptolemaic period, were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ [γράμματα] (tà hieroglyphikà [grámmata]) "the sacred engraved letters", the Greek counterpart to the Egyptian expression of mdw.w-nṯr "god's words". Greek ἱερόγλυφος meant "a carver of hieroglyphs".

In English, hieroglyph as a noun is recorded from 1590, originally short for nominalized hieroglyphic (1580s, with a plural hieroglyphics), from adjectival use (hieroglyphic character).

The Nag Hammadi texts written in Sahidic Coptic call the hieroglyphs "writings of the magicians, soothsayers" (ϩⲉⲛⲥϩⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲛ︦ϣ︦).

Origin
Hieroglyphs may have emerged from the preliterate artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c. 4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing.

Proto-writing systems developed in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called "Scorpion I" (Naqada IIIA period, c. 33rd century BC) recovered at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) in 1998 or the Narmer Palette (c. 31st century BC).

The first full sentence written in mature hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal impression in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qa'ab, which dates from the Second Dynasty (28th or 27th century BC). Around 800 hieroglyphs are known to date back to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom Eras. By the Greco-Roman period, there were more than 5,000.

Scholars have long debated whether hieroglyphs were "original", developed independently of any other script, or derivative. Original scripts are very rare.

Previously, scholars like Geoffrey Sampson argued that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". Further, Egyptian writing appeared suddenly, while Mesopotamia had a long evolutionary history of the usage of signs—for agricultural and accounting purposes—in tokens dating as early back to c. 8000 BC.

However, more recent scholars have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..." While there are many instances of early Egypt-Mesopotamia relations, the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing means that "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Since the 1990s, the above-mentioned discoveries of glyphs at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, have shed further doubt on the classical notion that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. A date of c. 3400 BCE for the earliest Abydos glyphs challenges the hypothesis of diffusion from Mesopotamia to Egypt, pointing to an independent development of writing in Egypt.

Rosalie David has argued that the debate is moot since "If Egypt did adopt the idea of writing from elsewhere, it was presumably only the concept which was taken over, since the forms of the hieroglyphs are entirely Egyptian in origin and reflect the distinctive flora, fauna and images of Egypt's own landscape." Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar argued further that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols derived from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and in "regards to writing, we have seen that a purely Nilotic, hence African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality."

Mature writing system
Hieroglyphs consist of three kinds of glyphs: phonetic glyphs, including single-consonant characters that function like an alphabet; logographs, representing morphemes; and determinatives, which narrow down the meaning of logographic or phonetic words.

Late Period
As writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic (priestly) and demotic (popular) scripts. These variants were also more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental and other formal writing. The Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.

Late survival
Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule (intermittent in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE), and after Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the misleading quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part, as a response to the changed political situation. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish 'true Egyptians' from some of the foreign conquerors. Another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally. Having learned that hieroglyphs were sacred writing, Greco-Roman authors imagined the complex but rational system as an allegorical, even magical, system transmitting secret, mystical knowledge.

By the 4th century CE, few Egyptians were capable of reading hieroglyphs, and the "myth of allegorical hieroglyphs" was ascendant. Monumental use of hieroglyphs ceased after the closing of all non-Christian temples in 391 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I; the last known inscription is from Philae, known as the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom, from 394.

The Hieroglyphica of Horapollo (c. 5th century) appears to retain some genuine knowledge about the writing system. It offers an explanation of close to 200 signs. Some are identified correctly, such as the "goose" hieroglyph (zꜣ) representing the word for "son".

A half-dozen Demotic glyphs are still in use, added to the Greek alphabet when writing Coptic.

Decipherment
Knowledge of the hieroglyphs had been lost completely in the medieval period. Early attempts at decipherment are due to Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya (9th and 10th century, respectively).

All medieval and early modern attempts were hampered by the fundamental assumption that hieroglyphs recorded ideas and not the sounds of the language. As no bilingual texts were available, any such symbolic 'translation' could be proposed without the possibility of verification. It was not until Athanasius Kircher in the mid 17th century that scholars began to think the hieroglyphs might also represent sounds. Kircher was familiar with Coptic, and thought that it might be the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs, but was held back by a belief in the mystical nature of the symbols.

The breakthrough in decipherment came only with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Napoleon's troops in 1799 (during Napoleon's Egyptian invasion). As the stone presented a hieroglyphic and a demotic version of the same text in parallel with a Greek translation, plenty of material for falsifiable studies in translation was suddenly available. In the early 19th century, scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Åkerblad, and Thomas Young studied the inscriptions on the stone, and were able to make some headway. Finally, Jean-François Champollion made the complete decipherment by the 1820s. In his Lettre à M. Dacier (1822), he wrote:

"It is a complex system, writing figurative, symbolic, and phonetic all at once, in the same text, the same phrase, I would almost say in the same word."

Writing system
Visually, hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative: they represent real or abstract elements, sometimes stylized and simplified, but all generally perfectly recognizable in form. However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (phonetic reading), as a logogram, or as an ideogram (semagram; "determinative") (semantic reading). The determinative was not read as a phonetic constituent, but facilitated understanding by differentiating the word from its homophones.

Phonetic reading
Most non-determinative hieroglyphic signs are phonograms, whose meaning is determined by pronunciation, independent of visual characteristics. This follows the rebus principle where, for example, the picture of an eye could stand not only for the English word eye, but also for its phonetic equivalent, the first person pronoun I.

Phonograms formed with one consonant are called uniliteral signs; with two consonants, biliteral signs; with three, triliteral signs.

Twenty-four uniliteral signs make up the so-called hieroglyphic alphabet. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing does not normally indicate vowels, unlike cuneiform, and for that reason has been labelled by some as an abjad, i.e., an alphabet without vowels.

Thus, hieroglyphic writing representing a pintail duck is read in Egyptian as sꜣ, derived from the main consonants of the Egyptian word for this duck: 's', 'ꜣ' and 't'. (Note that ꜣ or, two half-rings opening to the left, sometimes replaced by the digit '3', is the Egyptian alef.)

It is also possible to use the hieroglyph of the pintail duck without a link to its meaning in order to represent the two phonemes s and ꜣ, independently of any vowels that could accompany these consonants, and in this way write the word: sꜣ, "son"; or when complemented by other signs detailed below sꜣ, "keep, watch"; and sꜣṯ.w, "hard ground". For example:

– the characters sꜣ;

– the same character used only in order to signify, according to the context, "pintail duck" or, with the appropriate determinative, "son", two words having the same or similar consonants; the meaning of the little vertical stroke will be explained further on under Logograms:

– the character sꜣ as used in the word sꜣw, "keep, watch"

As in the Arabic script, not all vowels were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs; it is debatable whether vowels were written at all. Possibly, as with Arabic, the semivowels and  (as in English W and Y) could double as the vowels  and. In modern transcriptions, an e is added between consonants to aid in their pronunciation. For example, nfr "good" is typically written nefer. This does not reflect Egyptian vowels, which are obscure, but is merely a modern convention. Likewise, the ꜣ and ꜥ are commonly transliterated as a, as in Ra (rꜥ).

Hieroglyphs are inscribed in rows of pictures arranged in horizontal lines or vertical columns. Both hieroglyph lines as well as signs contained in the lines are read with upper content having precedence over content below. The lines or columns, and the individual inscriptions within them, read from left to right in rare instances only and for particular reasons at that; ordinarily however, they read from right to left–the Egyptians' preferred direction of writing (although, for convenience, modern texts are often normalized into left-to-right order). The direction toward which asymmetrical hieroglyphs face indicate their proper reading order. For example, when human and animal hieroglyphs face or look toward the left, they almost always must be read from left to right, and vice versa.

As in many ancient writing systems, words are not separated by blanks or punctuation marks. However, certain hieroglyphs appear particularly common only at the end of words, making it possible to readily distinguish words.

Uniliteral signs

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script contained 24 uniliterals (symbols that stood for single consonants, much like letters in English). It would have been possible to write all Egyptian words in the manner of these signs, but the Egyptians never did so and never simplified their complex writing into a true alphabet.

Each uniliteral glyph once had a unique reading, but several of these fell together as Old Egyptian developed into Middle Egyptian. For example, the folded-cloth glyph (𓋴) seems to have been originally an /s/ and the door-bolt glyph (𓊃) a /θ/ sound, but these both came to be pronounced, as the sound was lost. A few uniliterals first appear in Middle Egyptian texts.

Besides the uniliteral glyphs, there are also the biliteral and triliteral signs, to represent a specific sequence of two or three consonants, consonants and vowels, and a few as vowel combinations only, in the language.

Phonetic complements
Egyptian writing is often redundant: in fact, it happens very frequently that a word is followed by several characters writing the same sounds, in order to guide the reader. For example, the word nfr, "beautiful, good, perfect", was written with a unique triliteral that was read as nfr:

However, it is considerably more common to add to that triliteral, the uniliterals for f and r. The word can thus be written as nfr+f+r, but one still reads it as merely nfr. The two alphabetic characters are adding clarity to the spelling of the preceding triliteral hieroglyph.

Redundant characters accompanying biliteral or triliteral signs are called phonetic complements (or complementaries). They can be placed in front of the sign (rarely), after the sign (as a general rule), or even framing it (appearing both before and after). Ancient Egyptian scribes consistently avoided leaving large areas of blank space in their writing and might add additional phonetic complements or sometimes even invert the order of signs if this would result in a more aesthetically pleasing appearance (good scribes attended to the artistic, and even religious, aspects of the hieroglyphs, and would not simply view them as a communication tool). Various examples of the use of phonetic complements can be seen below:

 * – md +d +w (the complementary d is placed after the sign) → it reads mdw, meaning "tongue".

 * – ḫ +p +ḫpr +r +j (the four complementaries frame the triliteral sign of the scarab beetle) → it reads ḫpr.j, meaning the name "Khepri", with the final glyph being the determinative for 'ruler or god'.

Notably, phonetic complements were also used to allow the reader to differentiate between signs that are homophones, or which do not always have a unique reading. For example, the symbol of "the seat" (or chair):

 * – This can be read st, ws or ḥtm, according to the word in which it is found. The presence of phonetic complements—and of the suitable determinative—allows the reader to know which of the three readings to choose:

 * 1st Reading: st –  – st, written st+t; the last character is the determinative of "the house" or that which is found there, meaning "seat, throne, place";

 * – st (written st+t; the "egg" determinative is used for female personal names in some periods), meaning "Isis";

 * 2nd Reading: ws –  – wsjr (written ws+jr, with, as a phonetic complement, "the eye", which is read jr, following the determinative of "god"), meaning "Osiris";

 * 3rd Reading: ḥtm –  – ḥtm.t (written ḥ+ḥtm+m+t, with the determinative of "Anubis" or "the jackal"), meaning a kind of wild animal;

 * – ḥtm (written ḥ +ḥtm +t, with the determinative of the flying bird), meaning "to disappear".

Finally, it sometimes happens that the pronunciation of words might be changed because of their connection to Ancient Egyptian: in this case, it is not rare for writing to adopt a compromise in notation, the two readings being indicated jointly. For example, the adjective bnj, "sweet", became bnr. In Middle Egyptian, one can write:
 * – bnrj (written b+n+r+i, with determinative)

which is fully read as bnr, the j not being pronounced but retained in order to keep a written connection with the ancient word (in the same fashion as the English language words through, knife, or victuals, which are no longer pronounced the way they are written.)

Semantic reading
Besides a phonetic interpretation, characters can also be read for their meaning: in this instance, logograms are being spoken (or ideograms) and semagrams (the latter are also called determinatives).

Logograms
A hieroglyph used as a logogram defines the object of which it is an image. Logograms are therefore the most frequently used common nouns; they are always accompanied by a mute vertical stroke indicating their status as a logogram (the usage of a vertical stroke is further explained below); in theory, all hieroglyphs would have the ability to be used as logograms. Logograms can be accompanied by phonetic complements. Here are some examples:

 * – rꜥ, meaning "sun";

 * – pr, meaning "house";

 * – swt (sw+t), meaning "reed";

 * – ḏw, meaning "mountain".

In some cases, the semantic connection is indirect (metonymic or metaphoric):

 * – nṯr, meaning "god"; the character in fact represents a temple flag (standard);

 * – bꜣ, meaning "Bâ" (soul); the character is the traditional representation of a "bâ" (a bird with a human head);

 * – dšr, meaning "flamingo"; the corresponding phonogram means "red" and the bird is associated by metonymy with this color.

Determinatives
Determinatives or semagrams (semantic symbols specifying meaning) are placed at the end of a word. These mute characters serve to clarify what the word is about, as homophonic glyphs are common. If a similar procedure existed in English, words with the same spelling would be followed by an indicator that would not be read, but which would fine-tune the meaning: "retort [chemistry]" and "retort [rhetoric]" would thus be distinguished.

A number of determinatives exist: divinities, humans, parts of the human body, animals, plants, etc. Certain determinatives possess a literal and a figurative meaning. For example, a roll of papyrus,    is used to define "books" but also abstract ideas. The determinative of the plural is a shortcut to signal three occurrences of the word, that is to say, its plural (since the Egyptian language had a dual, sometimes indicated by two strokes). This special character is explained below.

Here, are several examples of the use of determinatives borrowed from the book, Je lis les hiéroglyphes ("I am reading hieroglyphs") by Jean Capart, which illustrate their importance:

– nfrw (w and the three strokes are the marks of the plural): [literally] "the beautiful young people", that is to say, the young military recruits. The word has a young-person determinative symbol: – which is the determinative indicating babies and children; – nfr.t (.t is here the suffix that forms the feminine): meaning "the nubile young woman", with  as the determinative indicating a woman; – nfrw (the tripling of the character serving to express the plural, flexional ending w) : meaning "foundations (of a house)", with the house as a determinative, ; – nfr : meaning "clothing" with   as the determinative for lengths of cloth; – nfr : meaning "wine" or "beer"; with a jug    as the determinative.

All these words have a meliorative connotation: "good, beautiful, perfect". The Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian by Raymond A. Faulkner, gives some twenty words that are read nfr or which are formed from this word.

Cartouche
Rarely, the names of gods are placed within a cartouche; the two last names of the sitting king are always placed within a cartouche:

jmn-rꜥ, "Amon-Ra";

qljwꜣpdrꜣ.t, "Cleopatra";

Filling stroke
A filling stroke is a character indicating the end of a quadrat that would otherwise be incomplete.

Signs joined
Some signs are the contraction of several others. These signs have, however, a function and existence of their own: for example, a forearm where the hand holds a scepter is used as a determinative for words meaning "to direct, to drive" and their derivatives.

Doubling
The doubling of a sign indicates its dual; the tripling of a sign indicates its plural.

Grammatical signs

 * The vertical stroke indicates that the sign is a logogram.
 * Two strokes indicate the dual number, and the three strokes the plural.
 * The direct notation of flexional endings, for example:

Spelling
Standard orthography—"correct" spelling—in Egyptian is much looser than in modern languages. In fact, one or several variants exist for almost every word. One finds:

 * Redundancies;
 * Omission of graphemes, which are ignored whether or not they are intentional;
 * Substitutions of one grapheme for another, such that it is impossible to distinguish a "mistake" from an "alternate spelling";
 * Errors of omission in the drawing of signs, which are much more problematic when the writing is cursive (hieratic) writing, but especially demotic, where the schematization of the signs is extreme.

However, many of these apparent spelling errors constitute an issue of chronology. Spelling and standards varied over time, so the writing of a word during the Old Kingdom might be considerably different during the New Kingdom. Furthermore, the Egyptians were perfectly content to include older orthography ("historical spelling") alongside newer practices, as though it were acceptable in English to use archaic spellings in modern texts. Most often, ancient "spelling errors" are simply misinterpretations of context. Today, hieroglyphicists use numerous cataloguing systems (notably the Manuel de Codage and Gardiner's Sign List) to clarify the presence of determinatives, ideograms, and other ambiguous signs in transliteration.

Simple examples
The glyphs in this cartouche are transliterated as:

though ii is considered a single letter and transliterated y.

Another way in which hieroglyphs work is illustrated by the two Egyptian words pronounced pr (usually vocalised as per). One word is 'house', and its hieroglyphic representation is straightforward: Here, the 'house' hieroglyph works as a logogram: it represents the word with a single sign. The vertical stroke below the hieroglyph is a common way of indicating that a glyph is working as a logogram.

Another word pr is the verb 'to go out, leave'. When this word is written, the 'house' hieroglyph is used as a phonetic symbol: Here, the 'house' glyph stands for the consonants pr. The 'mouth' glyph below it is a phonetic complement: it is read as r, reinforcing the phonetic reading of pr. The third hieroglyph is a determinative: it is an ideogram for verbs of motion that gives the reader an idea of the meaning of the word.

Encoding and font support
Egyptian hieroglyphs were added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2 which introduced the Egyptian Hieroglyphs block (U+13000–U+1342F).

, four fonts, Aegyptus, NewGardiner, Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs and JSeshFont support this range. Another font, Segoe UI Historic, comes bundled with Windows 10 and also contains glyphs for the Egyptian Hieroglyphs block. Segoe UI Historic excludes three glyphs depicting phallus (Gardiner's D52, D52A D53, Unicode code points U+130B8–U+130BA).

title: Egyptian hieroglyphs