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Illustration of a
scribe writing
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system). It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as magnetic tape audio.
Writing began as a consequence of the burgeoning needs of
accounting. 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 (Robinson, 2003, p. 36).
Writing as a category
Writing, more particularly, refers to two things: writing as a noun, the thing that is written; and writing as a 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 generated. 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 made in the arts and sciences.
For example, while public speaking and poetry reading are both types of speech, the former is governed by the rules of rhetoric and the latter by poetics.
A person who composes a message or story in the form of text is generally known as a writer or an author. However, more specific designations exist which are dictated by the particular nature of the text such as that of poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, journalist, and more. A person who transcribes, translates or produces text to deliver a message authored by another person is known as a scribe, typist or typesetter. A person who produces text with emphasis on the aesthetics of glyphs is known as a calligrapher or graphic designer.
Writing is also 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. It is also speculated that extra-terrestrial beings exist who may possess knowledge of writing. The fact is that the only known writing is human writing.
Means for recording information
Wells argues that writing has the ability to "put agreements, laws,
commandments on record. It made the growth of states larger than the
old city states possible. The command of the priest or king and his
seal could go far beyond his sight and voice and could survive his
death" (Wells in Robinson, 2003, p. 35).
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 category, 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 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 also
used to represent the syllable "ka" whenever the pronunciation of a
logogram needed to be indicated, or when there was no logogram. In
Chinese, about 90% of characters are compounds of a semantic (meaning)
element called a radical with an existing character to indicate the pronunciation, called a phonetic. 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,
to a lesser extent, Korean in South Korea. Another is the classical Yi script.
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. 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. Most logographic systems have a strong syllabic component. Ethiopic,
though technically an alphabet, has fused consonants and vowels
together to the point that it's learned as if it were a syllabary.
Alphabets
- See also: History of the alphabet
An alphabet is a small
set of symbols, each of which roughly represents or historically
represented a phoneme of the language. In a perfectly phonological
alphabet, the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two
directions: 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. As languages often evolve independently of their
writing systems, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages
they were not designed for, the degree to which letters of an alphabet
correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language
to another and even within a single language.
In most of the alphabets of the Mid-East, only consonants are
indicated, or vowels may be indicated with optional diacritics. Such
systems are called abjads.
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. Some abugidas, such as Ethiopic and Cree,
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.
Sometimes the term "alphabet" is restricted to systems with separate letters for consonants and vowels, such as the Latin alphabet. Because of this use, Greek is often considered to be the first alphabet.
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.
Historical significance of writing systems
Historians draw a distinction between prehistory and history, with
history defined by the advent of writing. The cave paintings and
petroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can be considered precursors of
writing, but are not considered writing because they did not represent
language directly.
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.
Tools and materials
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. It is speculated that the Incas might have employed knotted threads known as quipu (or khipu) as a writing system.
For more information see writing implements.
History of early writing
-
By definition, history begins with written records; evidence of human culture without writing is the realm of prehistory.
The writing process involved from economic necessity in the ancient near east. Archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat determined the link between previously uncategorized clay "tokens" and the first known writing, cuneiform.[1] The clay tokens were used to represent commodities, and perhaps even units of time spent in labor,
and their number and type became more complex as civilization advanced.
A degree of complexity was reached when over a hundred different kinds
of tokens had to be accounted for, and tokens were wrapped and fired in
clay, with markings to indicate the kind of tokens inside. These
markings soon replaced the tokens themselves, and the clay envelopes
were demonstrably the prototype for clay writing tablets.[1]
Mesopotamia
The original Mesopotamian writing system was derived from this method of keeping accounts, and by the end of the 4th millennium BC,[2]
this had evolved into using a triangular-shaped stylus pressed into
soft clay 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
by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at first only for logograms,
but evolved to include phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. Around
the 26th century BC, cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian.
Also in that period, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing
system for logograms, syllables, and numbers, and this script was
adapted to another Mesopotamian language, Akkadian, 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.
Turkmenistan
An unknown civilization in Central Asia 4,000 years ago, hundreds of
years before Chinese writing developed. An excavation near Ashgabat,
the capital of Turkmenistan, revealed an inscription on a piece of
stone that was used as a stamp seal. [3]
China
- Further information: Oracle bone script and Bronzeware script
In China historians have found out a lot about the early Chinese dynasties from the written documents left behind. From the Shang Dynasty most of this writing has survived on bones or bronze implements. Markings on turtle shells (used as oracle bones) have been carbon-dated to around 1500 BC. 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 recently been discoveries of tortoise-shell carvings dating back to c. 6000 BC, but whether or not the carvings are of sufficient complexity to qualify as writing is under debate.[4][5]
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.
Egypt
The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions are the Narmer Palette,
dating to c.3200 BC, and several recent discoveries that may be
slightly older, 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
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Classical
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