[userbinator]

The fact that many of them are rotations/reflections of others also makes it much harder to recognise when text is in its correct orientation. Not really a problem if you're reading a book, but for things like signage and labeling I could see it being a source of ambiguity.

Looking at the glyphs really makes me appreciate the fact that traditional, "evolved" alphabets are naturally quite redundant --- it adds an important layer of error-resistance.

[KirinDave]

So after seeing this story I decided to learn basic Shavian and, about 4 days in, I can read like a 3rd grader. I thought this might be a problem for Shavian, as well, but after experiencing it; it's really not.

Go check out something like a copy of Dune (https://shavian.weebly.com/uploads/1/0/2/1/10212142/dune_fir...) and turn it on its side (or even flip it over). It's not really an issue to immediately recognize what the right way up is. If nothing else, a single proper noun will give the entire game up.

It's not like Shavian is unique in that different orientations of the text can resemble proper letterforms. Many scripts have that and they're just fine.

[saalweachter]

Also the characters which are basically larger and smaller versions of the same shape. Now to figure out if you're at the correct apartment, you need to know the font size used on the door.

[KirinDave]

It's not really possible to write a normal word without using one vowel, so this problem doesn't exist at all. The tall letters are pretty cleverly selected in this fashion.