Writing is a form of communication through the act of preserving
text on a medium, with the use of signs or symbols. It is in principle
the representation of language, rather than images of thought directly.
In that regard, it is to be distinguished from pictography such as cave
drawings and paintings on the one hand, and recorded speech such as tape
recordings and movies, on the other. The development of writing can be
understood as the effort to map the complexity of language into an
efficient form that communicates as closely as possible the meaning of
the spoken language, but also preserves it so that others can read and
learn from it at a later time.
Writing can take several forms: logographies typically developed from
pictograophy, and require thousands of symbols each representing whole
words; phonographic systems use symbols for words of similar sound, and
may evolve to develop syllabaries; an alphabet provides symbols for all
the consonants and vowels that are used to spell words, in more or less
phonetic fashion.
While recordings of speech became possible through modern advances in
technology, writing nonetheless maintains its place in human society,
fulfilling many functions beyond those carried out by spoken language.
First invented by the early civilizations, writing is one of the most
uniquely human cultural developments. Different writing systems reflect
the historical times, the cultures, and variety of ways that human
ingenuity devises to accomplish the goal. Writing continues to be an
essential life skill today, used by the majority of people around the
world, in average daily-life activities, as well as in professional and
creative capacities. Efforts to achieve universal literacy are a high
priority in contemporary society, as humankind develops a greater
awareness of universal human rights and a desire to live harmoniously
together in a world of peace.
Introduction
Writing refers to two activities: writing as a noun, the thing that is written; and writing as the verb, which designates the activity
of writing. It refers to the inscription of characters on a medium,
thereby forming words, and larger units of language, known as texts. It
also refers to the creation of meaning and the information thereby. In
that regard, linguistics (and related sciences) distinguishes between
the written language and the spoken language. The significance of the
medium by which meaning and information is conveyed is indicated by the
distinction that is made in the arts and sciences; for example, in
speech, or speaking: public speaking is a distinctly different activity,
as is poetry reading; the former is governed by the rules of rhetoric,
while the latter by poetics.
Writing systems always develop and change based on the needs of the
people who use them. Sometimes the shape, orientation and meaning of
individual signs also changes over time. By tracing the development of a
script it is possible to learn about the needs of the people who used
the script as well as how it changed over time.
The act of writing
Letter and word recording used to presuppose penmanship, and in earlier
times, there were professional scribes who were especially skilled in
that regard. The many tools and writing materials used throughout
history include stone tablets, clay tablets, wax tablets, vellum,
parchment, paper, copperplate, styluses, quills, ink brushes, pencils,
pens, and many styles of lithography.
In more recent times, a variety of machines have been introduced to aid
the writer, from the typewriter to computer the use of a keyboard has
changed the skills required. Later developments include voice
recognition software which blurs the distinction between recording
spoken words and the act of writing by allowing the "writer" to merely
speak the words from which the machine prepares a written text.
Writing is a distinctly human activity. It has been said that a monkey,
randomly typing away on a typewriter (in the days when typewriters
replaced the pen or plume as the preferred instrument of writing) could
re-create Shakespeare—but only if it lived long enough (this is known as
the infinite monkey theorem). Such writing has been speculatively
designated as coincidental. Some have speculated that extra-terrestrial
beings exist who may possess writing. The fact is, however, that the
only known writing is human writing.
Writer
A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word
more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or
those who have written in many different forms. The word is almost
synonymous with author, although somebody who writes, say, a
laundry list, could technically be called the writer of the list, but
not an author. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas
and images, whether producing fiction or non-fiction.
A writer may compose in many different forms, including (but certainly
not limited to) poetry, prose, or music. Accordingly, a writer in a
specialist mode may rank as a poet, novelist, composer, lyricist,
playwright, mythographer, journalist, film scriptwriter, and so forth.
Writers' output frequently contributes to the cultural content of a
society, and that society may value its writerly corpus—or literature—as
an art much like the visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography),
music, craft, and performance art (drama, theater, opera, musical).
Writing systems
The major writing systems—methods of inscription—broadly fall into four
categories: logographic, syllabic, alphabetic, and featural. Another
category, ideographic (symbols for ideas), has never been developed
sufficiently to represent language. A sixth, pictographic, is
insufficient to represent language on its own, but often forms the core
of logographies.
Logographies
A logogram is a written character which represents a word or morpheme.
The vast number of logograms needed to write language, and the many
years required to learn them, are the major disadvantage of the
logographic systems over alphabetic systems. However, the efficiency of
reading logographic writing once it is learned is a major advantage.
No writing system is wholly logographic: all have phonetic components
(such as Chinese Pinyin or Hanyu Pinyin) as well as logograms
("logosyllabic" components in the case of Chinese characters, cuneiform,
and Mayan, where a glyph may stand for a morpheme, a syllable, or both;
"logoconsonantal" in the case of hieroglyphs), and many have an
ideographic component (Chinese "radicals," hieroglyphic "determiners").
For example, in Mayan, the glyph for "fin," pronounced "ka'," was used
to represent the syllable "ka" whenever clarification was needed.
However, such phonetic elements complement the logographic elements,
rather than vice versa.
The main logographic system in use today is Chinese characters, used
with some modification for various languages of China, Japanese, and
Korean.
Syllabaries
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate)
syllables. A glyph in a syllabary typically represents a consonant
followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone, though in some scripts more
complex syllables (such as consonant-vowel-consonant, or
consonant-consonant-vowel) may have dedicated glyphs.
Phonetically related syllables are not so indicated in the script. For
instance, the syllable "ka" may look nothing like the syllable "ki," nor
will syllables with the same vowels be similar.
Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable
structure, such as Japanese, which uses hiragana and katakana
syllabaries in addition to the logographic Chinese characters (Kanji).
Other languages that use syllabic writing include the Linear B script
for Mycenaean Greek; Cherokee; Ndjuka, an English-based creole language
of Surinam; and the Vai script of Liberia.
Featural scripts
A featural script notates the building blocks of the phonemes that make
up a language. For instance, all sounds pronounced with the lips
("labial" sounds) may have some element in common. In the Latin
alphabet, this is accidentally the case with the letters "b" and "p";
however, labial "m" is completely dissimilar, and the similar-looking
"q" is not labial. In Korean Hangul, however, all four labial consonants
are based on the same basic element. However, in practice, Korean is
learned by children as an ordinary alphabet, and the featural elements
tend to pass unnoticed.
Another featural script is SignWriting, the most popular writing system
for many sign languages, where the shapes and movements of the hands and
face are represented iconically. Featural scripts are also common in
fictional or invented systems, such as Tolkien's Tengwar.
History of writing
Proto-writing
The early writing systems of the late fourth millennium B.C.E. were not a
sudden invention. They were rather based on ancient traditions of
symbol systems that cannot be classified as writing proper, but have
many characteristics strikingly reminiscent of writing, so that they may
be described as "proto-writing." They may have been systems of
ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols that allowed to convey certain
information, but they are probably devoid of linguistic information.
These systems emerge from the early Neolithic, as early as the seventh
millennium B.C.E., if not earlier.
Notably the Vinca script shows an evolution of simple symbols beginning
in the seventh millennium, gradually increasing in complexity throughout
the sixth millennium and culminating in the Tărtăria tablets of the
fifth millennium with their rows of symbols carefully aligned, evoking
the impression of a "text." The hieroglyphic scripts of the Ancient Near
East (Egyptian, Sumerian proto-Cuneiform, and Cretan) seamlessly emerge
from such symbol systems, so that it is difficult to say, already
because very little is known about the symbols' meanings, at what point
precisely writing emerges from proto-writing.
In 2003, seventh millennium B.C.E. radiocarbon dated symbols Jiahu
Script carved into tortoise shells were discovered in China. The shells
were found buried with human remains in 24 Neolithic graves unearthed at
Jiahu, Henan province, northern China. According to some
archaeologists, the writing on the shells had similarities to the second
millennium B.C.E. Oracle bone script. The fourth millennium B.C.E.
Indus script may similarly constitute proto-writing, possibly already
influenced by the emergence of writing in Mesopotamia.
Cuneiform script
The original Sumerian writing system was derived from a system of clay
tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the fourth
millennium B.C.E., this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts,
using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles
for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic
writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted.
Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced about
2700-2500 B.C.E. by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term
cuneiform), at first only for logograms, but developed to include
phonetic elements by the twenty-ninth century B.C.E. About 2600 B.C.E.
cuneiform began to represent syllables of the Sumerian language.
Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for
logograms, syllables, and numbers. From the twenty-sixth century B.C.E.,
this script was adapted to the Akkadian language, and from there to
others such as Hurrian and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to
this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions date to c. 3200 B.C.E., on
such as the Narmer Palette, though the glyphs were based on a much older
artistic tradition. The hieroglyphic script was logographic with
phonetic adjuncts that included an effective alphabet.
Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and
literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only
people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train to become scribes,
in the service of temple, pharaonic, and military authorities. The
hieroglyph system was always difficult to learn, but in later centuries
was purposely made even more so, as this preserved the scribes' status.
The world's oldest known alphabet was developed in central Egypt around
2000 B.C.E. from a hieroglyphic prototype, and over the next 500 years
spread to Canaan and eventually to the rest of the world.
Chinese writing
In China the early Chinese dynasties left behind many written documents.
From the Shang Dynasty most of this writing has survived on bones or
bronze implements. Markings on turtle shells, or jiaguwen, have
been carbon-dated to around 1500 B.C.E. Historians have found that the
type of media used had an effect on what the writing was documenting and
how it was used.
There have been discoveries of tortoise-shell carvings dating back to c.
6000 B.C.E., like Jiahu Script, Banpo Script, but whether or not the
carvings are of sufficient complexity to qualify as writing is under
debate. If it is deemed to be a written language, writing in China will
predate Mesopotamian cuneiform, long acknowledged as the first
appearance of writing, by some 2000 years, however it is more likely
that the inscriptions are rather a form of proto-writing, similar to the
contemporary European Vinca script. Undisputed evidence of writing in
China dates from ca. 1600 B.C.E.
Indus script
The Middle Bronze Age Indus script dates back to the early Harrapan
phase of around 3000 B.C.E. It is unclear whether it should be
considered an example of proto-writing (a system of symbols or similar),
or if it is actual writing of the logographic-syllabic type of the
other Bronze Age writing systems.
Early Semitic alphabets
The first pure alphabets (properly, "abjads," mapping single symbols to
single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol) emerged
around 1800 B.C.E. in Ancient Egypt, as a representation of language
developed by Semitic workers in Egypt. These early abjads remained of
marginal importance for several centuries, and it is only towards the
end of the Bronze Age that the Proto-Sinaitic script splits into the
Proto-Canaanite alphabet (ca. 1400 B.C.E.) Byblos syllabary and the
South Arabian alphabet (ca. 1200 B.C.E.). The Proto-Canaanite was
probably somehow influenced by the un-deciphered Byblos syllabary and in
turn inspired the Ugaritic alphabet (ca. 1300 B.C.E.).
The rise of alphabetic writing
The Phoenician writing system was adapted from the Proto-Caananite
script in around the eleventh century B.C.E., which in turn borrowed
ideas from Egyptian hieroglyphics. This writing system was an abjad—that
is, a writing system in which only consonants are represented. This
script was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs
to represent their vowels. This alphabet in turn was adapted by various
peoples to write their own language, resulting in the Etruscan alphabet,
and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet and Runes. Other
descendants from the Greek alphabet include the Cyrillic alphabet, used
to write Russian, among others. The Phoenician system was also adapted
into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew script and also that of
Arabic are descended.
Mesoamerica
Of several pre-Colombian scripts in Mesoamerica, the one that appears to
have been best developed, and the only one to be deciphered, is the
Maya script. The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya date
to the third century B.C.E., and writing was in continuous use until
shortly after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the sixteenth
century C.E. Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of
syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese
writing.
Literacy
Literacy is usually defined as the ability to read and write, or the
ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. In ancient
times only a select few were truly literate, and therefore much of the
writing was restricted to scribes, the clergy and ruling class. Those
that could neither read nor write became dependent upon those who could;
hence, literacy became a tool of power. It also, however, became an
artistic tool, for as long as people have been literate, they have used
the ability to write to express thoughts, feelings, and experiences in
the form of written language. As literacy flourished later on, so to did
the amount of writing that was being done and the rate of exchange of
ideas over time and space increased dramatically.
In modern contexts, literacy refers to reading and writing at a level
adequate for communication, or at a level that lets one understand and
communicate ideas in a literate society. Literacy is part of the
development of individual maturity, allowing one to attain one's
potential as a person, and an essential skill that allows one to be a
fully functioning member of society. Twenty-first century consciousness,
as evidenced for example in the United Nations Millennium Development
Goals, regards literacy as an important skill that should be taught to
all people.