[Avodah] Writing God's name

[Motti Yarchinai]

I am designing something which is intended to be hung in a shul, 
school or beit-midrash. It is an item of practical use, but it also 
has an educational function as well as being an ornamental object 
with artistic and aesthetic feutures.

It will have certain passages from Tehilim inscribed on it in Hebrew, 
one of which includes the word E-l (meaning, contextually, God).

I don't understand why, but that word, when meant as as a noun 
(rather then the preposition "to"), is considered one of the sheva 
sheimot she-einan nimchakin (the seven names of God that may
not be erased) and which, therefore, should not be written on a davar 
ha-holech le-ibud (anything that is disposable in nature and not 
durable), and therefore likely to be discarded, which would result in 
God's name being treated with disrespect.

(The reason I don't understand the inclusion of this word in the 
seven, is that, linguistically, it is the equivalent of "God" in 
English, i.e. it is not a proper name of God, except when used in 
conjunction with a following qualifier such as "E-l Elyon",
or "E-l E-lohei Hashamayim".)

Anyway, accepting that it is included in the seven, my question is 
this: The item I am making is far more durable and less disposable in 
nature than the average siddur or chumash used in a shule -- the 
operable word being "used". i.e. with the kind of regular use that 
such seforim are subjected to, they will eventually become torn and 
tattered far sooner than the object I am designing, which will 
probably outlast the average siddur or chumash by many years.

With that in mind, I would like, for reasons of readability and 
artistic integrity, to spell the word E-l correctly, in full, but I 
am aware that many people might consider that objectionable.
If that is the case, then I am prepared to separate the Alef and 
Lamed by a full letter space (e.g. the width of a "shin"), which 
artistically, I consider preferrable to inserting a hyphen between 
them. I also believe that, contrary to popular opinion, it is also 
halachically preferrable, because a letter space is both 
grammatically and legally (in the laws of safrut), a separator, 
making the surrounding text two separate words, whereas a hyphen is 
the exact opposite, i.e. it is a joiner character -- notwithstanding 
the occasional ungrammatical (peculiarly American) use of hyphens one 
sometimes sees.

Sorry to all you people living across the Pacific, but every English 
speaker outside your country knows that Americans know nothing
about English grammar, just as everyone knows that the average 
Israeli knows far less about Hebrew grammar than a Ba-al Koreh in 
chutz la-aretz who may not be able to speak conversational Ivrit, but 
has learned Hebrew in a religious context. (Just my little rant.)

Then (to return to the topic), another solution occurred to me: There 
is a very old printers' device, that has had something of a revival 
in modern fonts. A ligature consisting of the right half of an alef 
combined with a slightly deformed lamed on the left and merged into a 
single character. It used to be seen occasionally in very old printed 
siddurim. The thing is, that it is actually now an official character 
in the Unicode definition (Unicode character U+FB4F Hebrew Ligature 
Alef Lamed), which means that it is available in some Hebrew fonts.

I don't really know for sure, but I am guessing that, halachically 
(in the laws of safrut), if that character is used on its own (to 
represent either the Hebrew word for "to" or the noun "God"), it is 
not a legal word because it does not contain either a properly formed 
aleph or a proper;y formed lamed of the required form.

I am wondering if this would be an acceptable (perhaps even 
preferrable) solution, halachically, to get around my problem. 
(Comments invited.)

Motti