The same Talmudic homily, recorded at Shabbat 104a, that reads Gimel as a generous man running with a foot extended toward the next letter reads Dalet as dal, a poor person, deliberately drawn facing away from Gimel so that the recipient of charity is spared the shame of being seen accepting it, a detail rabbinic tradition draws directly from the way the two letterforms sit beside one another. Dalet also demands unusual scribal precision because of how easily it can be miswritten as its near-twin, Resh, discussed elsewhere in this atlas: Jewish law requires Dalet's trailing corner to form a genuine right angle, since a rounded corner turns the letter into Resh and can invalidate the word, a concern sharpened by the last letter of the Shema's declaration of God's oneness, the word echad, one, which ends in a Dalet traditionally written enlarged.
Commentators read that enlarged final Dalet together with an enlarged final Ayin in the Shema's opening word, shema, as spelling out the word ed, witness, across the two verses, so that reciting the Shema correctly is itself read as bearing witness to the unity the prayer declares. Because a rounded rather than squared corner turns Dalet into Resh, a sofer copying that single word in the Shema is, in effect, under two layers of scrutiny at once, the ordinary risk of a look-alike letter and the added weight of a verse many worshippers recite from memory several times daily.