Scrawlgram (SG) is an English writing script. It operates on existant English spellings of words, not their pronunciations, so a text written in the Latin alphabet can be transcribed into SG and back losslessly (except the apostrophe, which is omitted in SG). Like English writing is made up of letters, SG is made up of glyphs. The way glyphs group up is more complex than Latin letters, which are simply written in a row, so SG may actually encode more information than alphabet writing.

SG is developed with the goal of being easy to read, quick to write, but also provide a reasonable level of obfuscation for an unfamiliar reader trying to decode it. There are several distinguishing features of SG which aim to provide these goals:

1. Very frequent glyphs are simpler to write, improving handwriting speed.
2. Certain glyphs are combinations of other glyphs (for example, {glyph E}), providing a light layer of obfuscation.
3. Instead of all being arranged in a row like letters, glyphs are further subdivided into columns with the glyph class system. Column writing provides a decoding challenge but nearly no friction for those already familiar.
4. Some glyphs have multiple interchangeable handwritten forms, providing light obfuscation.
5. Many compound glyphs (glyphs representing more than one letter) are provided for common letter subsequences in words for writing speed and obfuscation.
6. Despite these complexities, SG can be used and read after only learning the 26 glyphs corresponding to the English letters, similar to grade 1 Braille.

Each glyph belongs to one of three classes, which determine how the glyphs are stacked into columns. Each column may contain either (1) exactly one column glyph or (2) up to one major glyph and any number of minor glyphs.