Writing

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The Rosetta Stone (196 BC) bears writing in three different scripts: hieroglyphs (top) and Demotic (middle) record the same text in the Egyptian language, while an equivalent passage in Greek uses the Greek alphabet (bottom). These correspondences were key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early 19th century.

Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a script, as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language arises from a corresponding spoken language; while the use of language is universal across human societies, most spoken languages are not written.Template:Sfnp

Writing is a cognitive and social activity involving neuropsychological and physical processes. The outcome of this activity, also called writing (or a text) is a series of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Reading is the corresponding process of interpreting a written text, with the interpreter referred to as a reader.Template:Sfnp

In general, writing systems do not constitute languages in and of themselves, but rather a means of encoding language such that it can be read by others across time and space.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp While not all languages use a writing system, those that do can complement and extend the capacities of spoken language by creating durable forms of language that can be transmitted across space (e.g. written correspondence) and stored over time (e.g. libraries).Template:Sfnp Writing can also impact what knowledge people acquire, since it allows humans to externalize their thinking in forms that are easier to reflect on, elaborate on, reconsider, and revise.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Tools, materials, and motivations to writeEdit

Any instance of writing involves a complex interaction among available tools, intentions, cultural customs, cognitive routines, genres, tacit and explicit knowledge, and the constraints and limitations of the systems used.Template:Sfnp Inscriptions have been made with fingers, styluses, quills, ink brushes, pencils, pens, and many styles of lithography; surfaces used for these inscriptions include stone tablets, clay tablets, bamboo slats, papyrus, wax tablets, vellum, parchment, paper, copperplate, slate, porcelain, and other enameled surfaces.

The typewriter and subsequently various digital word processors have recently become widespread writing tools, and studies have compared the ways in which writers have framed the experience of writing with such tools as compared with the pen or pencil.Template:Sfnp

Advancements in natural language processing and natural language generation have resulted in software capable of producing certain forms of formulaic writing (e.g., weather forecasts and brief sports reporting) without the direct involvement of humansTemplate:Sfnp after initial configuration or, more commonly, to be used to support writing processes such as generating initial drafts, producing feedback with the help of a rubric, copy-editing, and helping translation.Template:Sfnp

Writing technologies from different eras coexist easily in many homes and workplaces. During the course of a day or even a single episode of writing, for example, a writer might instinctively switch among a pencil, a touchscreen, a text-editor, a whiteboard, a legal pad, and adhesive notes as different purposes arise.Template:Sfnp

Motivations and purposesEdit

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A bronze tympanum featuring the personification of Writing, above the main entrance to the Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C., sculpted by Olin Levi Warner in 1896

As human societies emerged, collective motivations for the development of writing were driven by pragmatic exigencies like keeping track of produce and other wealth, recording history, maintaining culture, codifying knowledge through curricula and lists of texts deemed to contain foundational knowledge (e.g. The Canon of Medicine) or artistic value (e.g. the literary canon), organizing and governing societies through texts including legal codes, census records, contracts, deeds of ownership, taxation, trade agreements, and treaties.Template:Sfnp As Charles Bazerman explains, the "marking of signs on stones, clay, paper, and now digital memories—each more portable and rapidly traveling than the previous—provided means for increasingly coordinated and extended action as well as memory across larger groups of people over time and space."Template:Sfnp For example, around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration in Mesopotamia outgrew human memory, and writing became a more dependable method for creating permanent records of transactions.Template:Sfnp On the other hand, writing in both ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica may have evolved through the political necessity to manage the calendar for recording historical and environmental events.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Further innovations included more uniform, predictable, and widely dispersed legal systems, the distribution of accessible versions of sacred texts, and furthering practices of scientific inquiry and knowledge management, all of which were largely reliant on portable and easily reproducible forms of inscribed language. The history of writing is co-extensive with uses of writing and the elaboration of activity systems that give rise to and circulate writing.

Individual motivations for writing include improvised additional capacity for the limitations of human memory Template:Sfnp (e.g. to-do lists, recipes, reminders, logbooks, maps, the proper sequence for a complicated task or important ritual), dissemination of ideas and coordination (e.g. essays, monographs, broadsides, plans, petitions, or manifestos), creativity and storytelling, maintaining kinship and other social networks,Template:Sfnp business correspondence regarding goods and services, and life writing (e.g. a diary or journal).Template:Sfnp

The global spread of digital communication systems such as email and social media has made writing an increasingly important feature of daily life, where these systems mix with older technologies like paper, pencils, whiteboards, printers, and copiers.Template:Sfnp Substantial amounts of everyday writing characterize most workplaces in developed countries.Template:Sfnp In many occupations (e.g. law, accounting, software design, human resources), written documentation is not only the main deliverable but also the mode of work itself.Template:Sfnp Even in occupations not typically associated with writing, routine records management has most employees writing at least some of the time.Template:Sfnp

Contemporary usesEdit

Some professions are typically associated with writing, such as literary authors, journalists, and technical writers, but writing is pervasive in most modern forms of work, civic participation, household management, and leisure activities.Template:Sfnp

Business and financeEdit

Template:See also Writing permeates everyday commerce. For example, in the course of an afternoon, a wholesaler might receive a written inquiry about the availability of a product line, then communicate with suppliers and fabricators through work orders and purchase agreements, correspond via email to affirm shipping availability with a drayage company, write an invoice, and request proof of receipt in the form of a written signature. At a much larger scale, modern systems of finances, banking, and business rest on many forms of written documentsTemplate:Sndincluding written regulations, policies, and procedures; the creation of reports and other monitoring documents to make, evaluate, and provide accountability for decisions and operations; the creation and maintenance of records; internal written communications within departments to coordinate work; written communications that comprise work products presented to other departments and to clients; and external communications to clients and the public.Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed Business and financial organizations also rely on many written legal documents, such as contracts, reports to government agencies, tax records, and accounting reports.Template:Sfnp Financial institutions and markets that hold, transmit, trade, insure, or regulate holdings for clients or other institutions are particularly dependent on written records (though now often in digital form) to maintain the integrity of their roles.Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed

Governance and lawEdit

Many modern systems of government are organized and sanctified through written constitutions at the national and sometimes state or other organizational levels. Written rules and procedures typically guide the operations of the various branches, departments, and other bodies of government, which regularly produce reports and other documents as work products and to account for their actions. In addition to legislatures that draft and pass laws, these laws are administered by an executive branch, which can present further written regulations specifying the laws and how they are carried out.Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed Governments at different levels also typically maintain written records on citizens concerning identities, life events such as births, deaths, marriages, and divorces, the granting of licenses for controlled activities, criminal charges, traffic offences, and other penalties small and large, and tax liability and payments.Template:Cn

Science and scholarshipEdit

Research undertaken in academic disciplines is typically published as articles in journals or within book-length monographs. Arguments, experiments, observational data, and other evidence collated in the course of research is represented in writing, and serves as the basis for later work. Data collection and drafting of manuscripts may be supported by grants, which usually require proposals establishing the value of such work and the need for funding.Template:Sfnp The data and procedures are also typically collected in lab notebooks or other preliminary files.Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed Preprints of potential publications may also be presented at academic or disciplinary conferences or on publicly accessible web servers to gain peer feedback and build interest in the work. Prior to official publication, these documents are typically read and evaluated by peer review from appropriate experts, who determine whether the work is of sufficient value and quality to be published.Template:Sfnp

Publication does not establish the claims or findings of work as being authoritatively true, only that they are worth the attention of other specialists. As the work appears in review articles, handbooks, textbooks, or other aggregations, and others cite it in the advancement of their own research, does it become codified as contingently reliable knowledge.Template:Sfnp

JournalismEdit

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News and news reporting are central to citizen engagement and knowledge of many spheres of activity people may be interested in about the state of their community, including the actions and integrity of their governments and government officials, economic trends, natural disasters and responses to them, international geopolitical events, including conflicts, but also sports, entertainment, books, and other leisure activities. While news and newspapers have grown rapidly from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the changing economics and ability to produce and distribute news have brought about radical and rapid challenges to journalism and the consequent organization of citizen knowledge and engagement.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed These changes have also created challenges for journalism ethics that have been developed over the past century.Template:Sfnp

Education and educational institutionsEdit

Formal education is the social context most strongly associated with the learning of writing, and students may carry these particular associations long after leaving school.Template:Sfnp Alongside the writing that students read (in the forms of textbooks, assigned books, and other instructional materials as well as self-selected books) students do much writing within schools at all levels, on subject exams, in essays, in taking notes, in doing homework, and in formative and summative assessments. Some of this is explicitly directed toward the learning of writing, but much is focused more on subject learning.Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Writing systemsEdit

Writing systems may be broadly classified according to what units of language are generally represented by its symbols:Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

Phonographies represent sounds of speechTemplate:Sndwith alphabets and syllabaries using symbols for phonemes and syllables respectively.
Logographies represent a language's units of meaning (words or morphemes), though still associated by readers with their given pronunciations in the corresponding spoken language.

LogographiesEdit

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Comparative evolution from pictograms to abstract shapes, in Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters

A logography is written using logograms Template:Sndwritten characters which represent individual words or morphemes.Template:Sfnp For example, the Maya glyph for 'fin', pronounced ka, was also used to represent the syllable ka whenever the pronunciation of a logogram needed to be indicated. Many logograms have an ideographic component (e.g. Chinese character radicals, hieroglyphic determinatives).

The main logographic system in use is Chinese characters, used primarily to write the Chinese languages and Japanese, and historically others from regions influenced by Chinese culture, such as Korean and Vietnamese. Other logographic systems include cuneiform and Maya script.Template:Citation needed

SyllabariesEdit

A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables,Template:Sfnp typically a consonant followed by a vowel, or just a vowel alone. In some scripts more complex syllables (e.g. consonant–vowel–consonant or consonant–consonant–vowel) may have dedicated glyphs. Phonetically similar syllables are not written similarly.Template:Sfnp For instance, the syllable ka may look nothing like the syllable ki, nor will syllables with the same vowels be similar.Template:Citation needed

Syllabaries are best suited to languages with a relatively simple syllable structure, such as Japanese. Other languages that use syllabic writing include Mycenaean Greek (Linear B), Cherokee,Template:Sfnp the Ndjuka creole language of Suriname, and the Vai language of Liberia.

AlphabetsEdit

Template:See also An alphabet is a set of written symbols that represent consonants and vowels.Template:Sfnp In a perfectly phonological alphabet, letters would correspond one-to-one with the language's phonemes. Thus, a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. In practice, the degree to which letters correspond with phonemes varies greatly between languages and the orthographies used when writing them.Template:Citation needed

AbjadsEdit

Alphabets that generally only have letters for consonants are called abjads or consonantaries; though optional, abjads may also use diacritical marks to specify which vowels follow each consonant. The earliest alphabets were abjads, influenced by symbols representing specific consonants that originated in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Most abjads are likewise native to the Middle East, reflecting the relatively limited variation of vowels in the morphology of the Semitic languages spoken in the region.Template:Sfnp

AbugidasEdit

In most of the alphabets of India and Southeast Asia, vowels are indicated through diacritics or modification of the shape of the consonant. These are called abugidas.Template:Sfnp Some abugidas, such as Geʽez and the Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, are learned by children as syllabaries, and so are often called "syllabics". However, unlike true syllabaries, there is not an independent glyph for each syllable.Template:Citation needed

History and originsEdit

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MesopotamiaEdit

While research into the development of writing during the Neolithic is ongoing, the current consensus is that it first evolved from economic necessity in the ancient Near East. Writing most likely began as a consequence of political expansion in ancient cultures, which needed reliable means for transmitting information, maintaining financial accounts, keeping historical records, and similar activities. Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration outgrew the power of memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form.Template:Sfnp

The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the emergence of civilizations and the beginning of the Bronze Age during the late 4th millennium BC. Cuneiform used to write the Sumerian language and Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of proto-writing systems between 3500 and 2900 BC,Template:Sfnp with earliest coherent texts from Template:Circa. It is generally agreed that Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.

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Globular envelope with a cluster of accountancy tokens, Uruk period, from Susa Template:Snd Louvre Museum

Archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat presented a theory establishing a link between previously uncategorized clay "tokens", the oldest of which have been found in the Zagros region of Iran, and cuneiform, the first known writing. Around 8000 BC, Mesopotamians began using clay tokens to count their agricultural and manufactured goods. Later they began placing these tokens inside large, hollow clay containers (bulla, or globular envelopes) which were then sealed. The quantity of tokens in each container came to be expressed by impressing, on the container's surface, one picture for each instance of the token inside. They next dispensed with the tokens, relying solely on symbols for the tokens, drawn on clay surfaces. To avoid making a picture for each instance of the same object (for example: 100 pictures of a hat to represent 100 hats), they counted the objects by using various small marks.Template:Sfnp

The original Mesopotamian writing system emerged Template:Cx from this method of keeping accounts. By the end of the 4th millennium BC,Template:Sfnp the Mesopotamians were using a triangular-shaped stylus pressed into soft clay to record numbers. This system was gradually augmented with using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted by means of pictographs. Round and sharp styluses were gradually replaced for writing by wedge-shaped styluses (hence the term cuneiform, from Latin {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 'wedge')Template:Sndat first only for logograms, with phonetic elements introduced by the 29th century BC. Around 2700 BC, cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian. About that time, Mesopotamian cuneiform became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. This script was adapted to another Mesopotamian language, the East Semitic Akkadian (Assyrian and Babylonian) Template:Cx, and then to others such as Elamite, Hattian, Hurrian and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian. With the adoption of Aramaic as the lingua franca of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC), Old Aramaic was also adapted to Mesopotamian cuneiform. The latest cuneiform texts in Akkadian discovered thus far date from the 1st century AD.Template:Sfnp

EgyptEdit

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Narmer Palette, with the two Serpopards representing unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, Template:Cx

The earliest known hieroglyphs date to around 5,200 years ago, with attestation including the clay labels of the Predynastic ruler "Scorpion I" (Naqada IIIA period, Template:Cx) recovered at Abydos (modern Umm el-Qa'ab) in 1998 or the Narmer Palette, dated Template:Cx.Template:Sfnp The hieroglyphic script was logographic with phonetic adjuncts that included an effective alphabet. The world's oldest deciphered sentence was found on a seal impression in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Abydos, dating to the Second Dynasty (28th or 27th century BC). Around 800 hieroglyphs were used during the Old, Middle, and New Kingdom periods (2686–1077 BC); by the Greco-Roman period (30 BCTemplate:Snd642 AD), more than 5,000 distinct glyphs are attested.Template:Sfnp

Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes.Template:Sfnp 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 complex and difficult to master.

Alphabetic writing is only known to have been invented once in human history. Around the mid-19th century BC, the Proto-Sinaitic script emerged among a community of Canaanite turquoise miners in the Sinai Peninsula.Template:Sfnp Around 30 crude inscriptions have been found at a mountainous Egyptian mining site known as Serabit el-Khadem, with symbols that stood for single consonant sounds rather than whole words or conceptsTemplate:Sndthe basis of an alphabetic system. It was not until between the 12th and 9th centuries that use of the alphabet became widespread.Template:Sfnp

MesoamericaEdit

Of several pre-Columbian 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 inscription identified as Maya dates to the 3rd century BC.Template:Sfnp Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing.

ChinaEdit

Template:Further The earliest surviving examples of writing in ChinaTemplate:Sndinscriptions on oracle bones, usually tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae which were used for divinationTemplate:Snddate from Template:Cx, during the Late Shang period. A small number of bronze inscriptions from the same period have also survived.Template:Sfnp

Elamite scriptsEdit

Over the centuries, three distinct Elamite scripts developed. Proto-Elamite is the oldest known writing system from Iran. In use (Template:Cx), clay tablets with Proto-Elamite writing have been found at different sites across Iran, with the majority having been excavated at Susa, an ancient city located east of the Tigris and between the Karkheh and Dez rivers.Template:Sfnp The Proto-Elamite script is thought to have developed from early cuneiform (proto-cuneiform). The Proto-Elamite script consists of more than 1,000 signs and is thought to be partly logographic. The Elamite cuneiform script was used from Template:Cx to 331 BC, and was adapted from the Akkadian cuneiform. At any given point within this period, the Elamite cuneiform script consisted of about 130 symbols, and over this entire period only 206 total signs were used. This is far fewer than most other cuneiform scripts.Template:Sfnp

EuropeEdit

Crete and GreeceEdit

Cretan hieroglyphs are attested on artefacts from Crete during the early-to-mid 2nd millennium BC (MM I–III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). Linear B, the writing system of the Mycenaean Greeks,Template:Sfnp has been deciphered while Linear A has yet to be deciphered. The sequence and the geographical spread of the three overlapping, but distinct writing systems can be summarized as follows (beginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins of all scripts lie further back in the past): Cretan hieroglyphs were used in Crete Template:Cx; Linear A was used in the Aegean Islands, and the Greek mainland Template:Cx; Linear B was used in Crete (Knossos), and the mainland Template:Cx.Template:Citation needed

Development of the alphabetEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The Proto-Sinaitic script, in which Proto-Canaanite is believed to have been first written, is attested as early as the 19th century BC. The Phoenician alphabet was adapted from the Proto-Canaanite script sometime before the 14th century BC, which in turn borrowed principles of representing phonetic information from Egyptian hieroglyphs. This writing system was an odd sort of syllabary in which only consonants are represented. This script was adapted by the Greeks, who adapted certain consonantal signs to represent their vowels. The Cumae alphabet, a variant of the early Greek alphabet, gave rise to the Etruscan alphabet and its own descendants, such as the Latin alphabet and runes. Other descendants from the Greek alphabet include Cyrillic, used to write Bulgarian, Russian and Serbian, among others. The Phoenician system was also adapted into the Aramaic script, from which the Hebrew and the Arabic scripts are descended.Template:Citation needed

Religious textsEdit

Template:See also In the history of writing, religious texts or writing have played a special role. For example, some religious text compilations have been some of the earliest popular texts, or even the only written texts in some languages, and in some cases are still highly popular around the world.Template:Sfnp Template:Page needed Template:Sfnp Template:Sfnp

ReferencesEdit

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Works citedEdit

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External linksEdit

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Language, Writing and Alphabet: An Interview with Christophe Rico Damqatum 3 (2007)
"Signs – Books – Networks", virtual exhibition of the German Museum of Books and Writing i.a. with a thematic module on sounds, symbols and script
Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse – open access books, journals, teaching resources on research and practice.

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