Office of Glyphs and Symbols
The Illuminatia Office of Glyphs and Symbols (OGS) is a government office operating within the Illuminatia Department of Language and Lexicology (DLL). The OGS is responsible for the maintaining and communicating standards for the symbols, pictographs, and other non-alphabetical, non-numeral figures used in written communication alongside the Glossa Communi language.
The OGS supports the language standardization mission of the Department of Language and Lexicology by helping to ensure written symbology remains as universally understood and stable in its use and meaning as the common language.
As standardization in the Glossa Communi language became achievable across Illuminatia, the DLL realized that non-linguistic symbology had the potential to become a non-standard form of communication. The Office of Glyphs and Symbols was established to help prevent unnecessary misunderstandings related to the use of symbols in commerce, industry, and other everyday use. It is understood that varying and non-standard usage of symbols could lead to unfortunate and potentially hazardous results if symbols are used to communicate critical or otherwise important details in circumstances in which the meaning of the communicator is different from that understood by the reader.
The OGS is charged with observing the use of symbology in written and visual media, in popular informal usage, in visual artwork, as well as formal circumstances such as publication in commercial and technical communications and mass media such as newspapers, magazines, telekinephotography broadcasts, and cinema. The OGS then synthesizes these observations into a descriptive standard that catalogues the actual usage of symbology in Illuminatian communication. The agency then attempts to apply prescriptive principles to its observations in efforts to standardize single meanings to various visual and written collections of lines, dots, curves, polygons, and other more complicated pictographic symbols and provide suggestions for variations and alternatives. The OGS might occasionally refer the public to the DLL for linguistic solutions to communication needs for which symbology proves insufficient.
The Office of Glyphs and Symbols publishes guides for symbol use in print and visual media, which mass media generally adopts. Suggestions for changes and alterations to the symbols suggested for use by the OGS are gladly accepted by the agency.