Writing

tablet sent by the high-priest Lu’enna to the king of Lagash It tells the king of his son's death in combat. The script is cuneiform, the date ~2400 BC]]
 at Van Fortress in Turkey]]
 at work]]

**Writing** is the art/act of recording language on a  medium using a set of symbols. The symbols must be known to others, so that the text may be read.

A text may also use other visual systems, such as illustrations and decorations. These are not called writing, but may help the message work. Usually, all educated people in a country use the same writing system to record the same language. To be able to read and write is to be literate.

Writing differs from speech because *the readers need not be present at the time*.  We can read writing from long ago, and from different parts of the world.  Text stores and communicates knowledge. Writing is one of the greatest inventions of the human species. It was invented after people settled in towns, and after agriculture started. Writing dates from about 3,300BC, which is over 5000 years ago, in the Middle East.

Writing today is usually on paper, though there are ways to print on almost any surface.   Television and movie screens can also display writing, and so can computer screens.  Many writing materials were invented, long before paper. Clay, papyrus, wood, slate and parchment (prepared animal skins) have all been used. The Romans wrote on waxed tablets with a pointed stylus; this was popular for temporary notes and messages.  The later invention of paper by the Chinese was a big step forward.

Writing is traditionally done using a hand tool such as a pencil, a pen, or a brush. More and more, however, text is created by input on a computer keyboard.

## Definition of writing 
There are two schools of thought:

**Partial writing*: Writing is any system of graphic symbols which conveys *some* thought. 
**Full writing*: Writing is any graphic system which can convey *any and all* thought.

We can only be sure a sign system is full writing if we can translate the symbols into a modern language. In the case of some ancient scripts we cannot do this.

## History of writing 
Writing was invented independently a number of times. The Sumerian, the ancient Egyptian, the Chinese and the Mayan writings are separate in their invention.p85 All these writing systems started with *pictographs*, symbols that stood for things. Then they developed a mixture of methods. Our own alphabetic system  is different. It is based on the sounds of spoken language. All alphabets are modified versions of the first one, which originated with the Phoenicians and the Ancient Greeks.

### Sumer 
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The Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 5000 years ago this was a fertile region and is now mostly in Iraq. The Sumerians developed a form of writing called cuneiform. Triangular marks were pressed into soft clay tablets. After the clay had dried in the sun the tablets were baked. Then they were carried somewhere else for others to read. We know that its first uses were for trade, accounting and administration.

The earliest signs were mostly pictorial, but soon they stood as symbols for objects, ideas and sounds. This writing system was extremely successful, and outlasted the Sumerian empire. It was then used by other civilisations in the Middle East, such as the Old 
Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite, Old Persian and Ugaritic empires. The last cuneiform inscription was dated as AD75. Thus the system had lasted for more than 3000 years.

China has eight regional languages that are mutually unintelligible, and many true dialects. The system appears to work mainly because as many as 70% speak Mandarin. Fluency in Chinese reading and writing is undoubtedly difficult to achieve, and this must act as a brake on the drive for literacy. There have been a number of attempts to reform or simplify the system. The most radical in Pinyin, which is a program to replace Chinese characters with an alphabetic system. This was supported by Mao, but faltered after his death.

## Alphabets 
It seems that the idea of an alphabet–a script based entirely upon sound–arose only once, and has been copied and adapted to suit many different languages. Although no alphabet fits its language perfectly, it is flexible enough to fit any language approximately. It was a unique invention.p12
 
Our alphabet is called the Roman alphabet, as compared with the Cyrillic and other alphabets. All of these come from the ancient Greek alphabet, which dates back to about 1100 to 800BC. The oldest Qu'ran manuscripts had no diacritics. Israeli children today use texts with vowel 'dots' added, to about the third grade. It is fairly clear from this that careful thought went into both the Phoenician invention and the Greek adaptation. However, no details survive of either process. A similar idea had been suggested many years before.

## Undeciphered scripts 
There are a number of scripts which have never been deciphered, despite much effort. The Indus River civilisation predates other literate civilisations on the Indian subcontinent, going back to about 2500BC. Their cities of Mohenjo-Daru and Harappa were well-planned, with good drainage. The script is found on seal stones, terracotta, bronze, bone and ivory. All are brief, and the language is unknown.

The Etruscan language used Greek letter-forms, and is found mainly on Etruscan tombs, from Tuscany through to Venice. They were an empire before the Romans, who defeated them, and absorbed their ideas. All knowledge of their language was lost, except that some of the names on tomb memorials can be read from the Greek letters.

### Vinča symbols 
The **Tărtăria tablets** are three tablets discovered in 1961 in the village of Tărtăria (Hungarian: Alsótatárlaka). This is about  from Alba Iulia in Romania. The tablets, dated to around 5300 BC, have symbols in clay: the "Vinča symbols". Some claim they are a yet undeciphered language. If this is so, they would be the earliest known form of writing. In 1908 similar symbols were found during excavations, by Miloje Vasić (1869–1956) in Vinča. This is a suburb of Belgrade (Serbia), some 300&nbsp;km from Turdaș. Later, more were found in another part of Belgrade. Since 1875 over one hundred and fifty Vinča sites have been found in Serbia alone. Many, including Vinča itself, have not been fully excavated. The culture of the whole area is called the Vinča culture. Although some of these symbols look exactly the same as some letters in Etruscan, Greek, and Aramaic, they are generally regarded as an original, independent development.

### Indus script 
The Indus script is another group of early symbols. It was used by the Indus Valley Civilization in what is now Pakistan and north-west India, from about 2600 BC to 1900 BC. The symbols are mostly known from small stone seals and clay tags, which may have been used in trade. Most texts are very short, with only a few signs, and the script has not been deciphered. No bilingual text is known for it.

Some experts think the Indus script is a full writing system for a spoken language. Others think it is a simpler system of signs. A 2025 study by Max Freedom Pollard suggests that many of these symbols were merchant marks used in trade and record-keeping, to show the owner, the type of goods, or a weight or number. In this view, the script may not be a full writing system that can say everything in a language, but a more narrow system of labels and marks. The same study also suggests that a famous long signboard from the city of Dholavira shows parts of an animal-drawn cart in order, like a large shop sign, instead of a normal sentence.

## Literacy 
It is only in the last 150 years that most people have been able to read and write in Europe and North America. In many other parts of the world this did not happen until the 20th century. Until then, literacy was mainly for clerics, that is, people who had training as priests. Even wealthy people were often illiterate, and used scribes to write for them. The invention of printing came before mass literacy. Before 1500, each book had to be created by hand, so there were few books available compared to the billions in the world today. Mass literacy needed cheap books.
 
Even now, there is still widespread illiteracy. There is often a political dimension to this. People who cannot write are easier to control.

## Handwriting 
The ordinary use of writing by means of a pen and paper. Can refer to writing for oneself, as in a diary, but mostly it refers to sending letters. Once it was almost the only means of communication between people who were separated. Now, the telephone and e-mail are the most common means of distance communication.

## Related pages
*Writing system
*Calligraphy
*Manuscript
*Philology
*Printing
*Shorthand

## References