Talk:History of writing

"Writing must be complete"?

Under "Writing systems", it is claimed: There are considered to be three writing criteria for all writing systems. The first being that writing must be complete. It must have a purpose or some sort of meaning to it. A point must be made or communicated in the text. Second, all writing systems must have some sort of symbols which can be made on some sort of surface, whether physical or digital. Lastly, the symbols used in the writing system must mimic spoken word/speech, in order for communication to be possible.

Everything seems reasonable to an amateur, except for the statement that writing must be complete. In what way? Do the next two sentences form a definition? In that case it could be made more obvious. Fomalhaut76 (talk) 18:52, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

It must be complete in the sense that every word someone wants to write in their language can be written. (In case you're interested in this topic, read John DeFrancis's Visible Speech. The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. He uses the term "full writing systems.") What would be a better wording for amateurs like you? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:22, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

a link to a scientific publication website-reg. update about a new (most ancient to date?) verified archaeological inscription discovery

Could someone please take a look at this webpage (which I have accidentally came upon: http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/tel-lachish-inscription-09571.html (entitled: Archaeologists Find 3,450-Year-Old Alphabetic Inscription in Israel) in order to DETERMINE what UPDATE CHANGES-if any at all, are needed/necessary for this Wikipedia page?

Thank you! :) AK63 (talk) 20:55, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Expand Mesoamerican Writing

This article quite disturbingly seems to all-but ignore the history of the independently-developed writing systems of Mesoamerica, with only a tiny section on it. Instead, it seems almost enitrely to focus on the history of writing in Afro-Eurasia. This is not an area I have much knowledge in, but information could perhaps be directly added from the article Mesoamerican writing systems. AvRand (talk) 20:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Inappropriate template?

The entire section on the uses and implications of writing was marked with the template about excessive detail. It seems to me this is no more detailed than the entire earlier sections on writing systems. Writing and the history of writing cannot properly be understood without some attention to the uses that have been made of it and how it has given rise to different realms of human activities. While writing systems are important, there is in fact another article "eriting systems" devoted to it, which dupicates much of the same information (as does the article on "writing."). Writing systems are only the beginnings of the story, and do not indicate the imporatnce of writing for human life. I would like to request this template be removed.

My username is cbazerman but the signature that follows will probably direct to a different user named methodical. Methodical 21:08, 5 November 2022 (UTC)± — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbazerman (talk • contribs)

The issue is that the details aren't all relevant. Like: Curricula at these traditional universities were soon regulated by the Vatican and were organized into four faculties: Liberal Arts, Theology, Law, and Medicine; what does that have to do with writing? Sure the students probably wrote about the topics, but why is it relevant that the Vatican organised education into these particular faculties, as opposed to some other system? The sentence could stop at "regulated by the Vatican", but even that seems tangential. This is an article about the history of writing, not the history of knowledge, or of religious education, or of curricula.

Another example: Ptolemy's Almagest (a Latinized versiion of the name of the Arabic translation, Al-Majisti) dominated astronomy through the Middle Ages; how is this relevant beyond the fact that the Almagest is a book and books contain written text? This might be relevant to an article about the history of astronomy, but not about the history of writing. While I understand that you're trying to convey that writing has been impactful in a number of fields, this point would be better made by a discussion of broader patterns of change rather than by discussing particular books.

Details like the examples I've given here are only tangentially relevant, and are excessive. As I said in the edit summary, I think you've gotten carried away. You need to be more selective about which details to include. While all this is very interesting, these details don't belong in this particular article. Perhaps some of this material can be moved to other articles. I'll leave that up to you. – Scyrme (talk) 23:38, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

ok. Now I got it. I will try to make the connections to writing more explicit and leave out things that may seem tangential. I will work on this soon. Methodical 02:03, 6 November 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cbazerman (talk • contribs)

I have now edited the writing and knowledge section to remove tangential information and make the section more explicitly focused on writing. I hope you will find it appropriate to remove the template now. Thanks for the help. Methodical 16:58, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

It's much better now; I've removed the template. – Scyrme (talk) 18:21, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks 68.227.85.78 (talk) 18:42, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Lead: "genres … digital currency"

What is this passage saying? How relevant are "money" (idealized exchange value) or "currency" (signified exchange value) to the history of writing, that they should be mentioned in the lead? Neither money nor currency imply writing, see coin, cowrie, tally stick. Is this just someone jamming in a plug for cryptocurrency? 2601:642:4600:BE10:28D4:17DB:75E1:C3E6 (talk) 06:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Good catch -- I removed it -- that had been here for a ridiculously long time too. I don't think editors review this article much despite its importance. SamuelRiv (talk) 06:52, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Alternatives to writing

Is it worth having a section on historical alternatives to writing? The only examples I can think of are oral tradition and the Incan Quipu Alexanderkowal (talk) 08:59, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

idiographic.

Idiographic not ldeographic as it says in the article. 2607:FEA8:88E5:A200:F50E:C6D4:58B:A810 (talk) 06:57, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Those are different words meaning different things. I'm not sure idiographic could be used here (I think not), but according to [1], ideographic has nearly 200 years of provinence in this sense. Nø (talk) 07:31, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I think we should adopt "idiography" as a synonym for "autobiography" Remsense诉 08:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Dispilio tablet

This article links to Dispilio tablet. That article seems to have serious problems regarding sourcing and notability. Though not a formal AfD (yet), I have here to delete that aricle. Please chime in there if you have an opinion (or help improve the article)! Nø (talk) 12:12, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Rearrangement

Understandably, a lot of outdated or non-scholarly sources have been used to describe proto-writing/other symbol systems in this article as writing. I think one of the underlying issues is the layout: we have a very rigid progressive layout which very much contradicts the understanding that all protowriting either in effect precedes writing or necessarily evolves into writing. Thoughts on how to better represent diverse traditions of protowriting in this article would be much appreciated. Remsense诉 20:48, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

@Alexeysun: the paragraph directly below the one you replaced directly contradicts the one above, which was sourced entirely to the aforementioned non-scholarly, outdated sources. They are news articles written close to the discoveries by non-experts. No scholarly consensus you or I have ever come across characterizes these systems as glottographic writing—the definition of writing used in this article, across Wikipedia, and in contemporary scholarly literature. Every single rundown of the history of orthography I have ever read excludes these systems or explicitly mentions they are not proven to be glottographic writing (at best) and cannot be characterized as such. You could see this both on this article and the ones for the symbols in question, if you had bothered to read a word of either in tandem with the explanations I gave. Remsense诉 22:52, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

On the topic of sources, is there any reason why under References there is both a Citations and Sources section? When should a work be placed under Sources and not just under Citations? 66.215.184.32 (talk) 10:39, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

It is very common for short citations to be listed separately from the full citations they refer to on articles like these. Remsense诉 12:15, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

I've still been racking my brain about this, and I think I've settled on that it's best to have a top-level organization based firstly on area, not time. Here's what I have:

1. Emergence – mostly terminology and universals, brief listing of ex nihilo inventions and proto-writing
2. Ancient Near East (3400–1000 BCE)
   1. Cuneiform in Mesopotamia
   2. Hieroglyphs in Egypt
3. Mediterranean abjads and alphabets (1000 BCE – present)
4. African and South Asian abugidas (800 BCE – present)
5. Chinese characters in the Far East (1250 BCE – present) – have to include Central and Southeast Asia, hence "Far East"
6. Mesoamerica (500 BCE – 1500 CE)
7. Materials and technology
8. Literacy and literary culture

This still feels awkward, with a top half that's primarily going by the typology of the writing system, and then cleaning up ancillary properties in the back half, but. Remsense ‥ 论 04:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

ENGVAR as Oxford

I am working on this article, and am going to specify its WP:ENGVAR as Oxford spelling, which I feel is appropriate both for historical linguistics cases, and reflects the earliest edits made to this article. If anyone has objections or concerns at any point, do not hesitate to revert this specification, or otherwise let me know and I will do it. Remsense ‥ 论 22:54, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

Associated language

In the Terminology section we say

... writing systems, which require knowledge of an associated spoken language to read a text

I'm not sure about this. One might, at least in theory, learn to read and write English, or Chinese, while having no idea how the letter strings or ideograms are pronounced. One would still need to know syntax and grammar, which might be said to require knowledge of the language, but not in its spoken form. Case in point: Deaf people can be proficient in the written language. So is the phrase I quote valid? Nø (talk) 16:40, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

The devil is in the ontology, I suppose. I'm presently pretty sure the present phrasing is not misleading—as goes my present understanding, Deaf people generally have meaningful knowledge of spoken language, very roughly like I can have comparably abstracted but meaningful knowledge of phenomena beyond the bounds of my sensory processing.

I don't think that's a deflection—the language remains a spoken one on some level, I think it's fair to say—but many (not all) of our sources here are so flaky or under-baked about Deaf linguistics. I'm glad I have Meletis and Dürscheid (2022) as regards this, as it's still self-admittedly brief but helpful in what it does say about the studies that have been done. But shaky, shaky. Remsense ‥ 论 16:54, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

In any case, it's most clear to me to understand that many Deaf people have a sign language as a first language and the written form of a spoken language as a second language, so I see no harm in just snipping "spoken" until I can get a better grip on this area. Remsense ‥ 论 17:01, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

undefined citations

Hello Remsense! In this edit, you added a footnote dependent on citations from "Martin 1994" and "Febvre, Martin 1958". But those citations don't exist here, and the article now has an undefined footnote error. Are you able to provide the missing citations to support your new footnote, so that the error can be fixed? -- mikeblas (talk) 15:12, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, not sure how I missed it. Remsense ‥ 论 15:56, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

Musical writing ?

This article apparently concerns verbal writing exclusively – it should perhaps more clearly say it, and possibly link to other articles about non-verbal writings. There exists a separate Musical notation article, but there also are notations for dance and other arts (see Goodman, Languages of Art). It also is surprising that the List of writing systems doesn't even mention music.

Also, both this and the Musical notation articles seem based on the common misconception that writing writes speech and that musical notation writes the sound of music. I think to have read histories of writings (probably among those quoted here) who make it clear that early writing often wrote down observations that never were uttered in speech, and I believe that musical notation first was about theoretical matters, not about music-as-sound.

These are rather complex questions, perhaps too complex for a WP article, but should they not shortly be said (or, better, written) in this article? — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 11:17, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Hello! Thank you very much for your input, especially as someone I look up to in these adjacent subject areas!

In short, and employing the bespoke jargon, writing is generally defined as what can be more specifically termed glottographic writing – using a system of tactile symbols to represent a particular human language. That is to say, other systems of signs like musical notation, mathematical notation, and street signs are excluded. However, a minority of scholars define writing in the much broader sense of semasiographic writing, which includes all these forms of communication and more. I believe I've already ironed this out on Writing system, but thank you for making clear this is an article that needs to happen on too! Remsense 🌈 论 11:25, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Though! I should also say I'm not opposed to touching on the broader sense of semasiographic writing in this article, especially given all the ways notations either develop from or in ways similar to writing systems proper. Remsense 🌈 论 11:35, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

You say that "writing can be more specifically termed glottographic writing" but, if I understand glottographic correctly, it would mean that writing is a representation of speech. My point was, among others, that verbal writing first was used to record things that never were said in speech. I think that this is more or less made clear in Senner, The Origins of Writing (1989), which I should reread.

To say that writing is used to "represent a particular human language" presupposes that languages are first spoken and that writing comes only later. This probably was Saussure's vision, but not Benveniste's in his Last Lectures of 1968 and 1969. The article Semasiography to which you refer writes that "Semasiography predates the advent of language-based writing," but what does "language" mean, here? Something different from writing, apparently, as writing may be based on it.

Once again, these are complex questions, but we cannot avoid them. – Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 14:14, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Glottographic is imprecise in etymology, reflecting many other ways we don't historically have the vocabulary that makes the distinctions we want between speech and writing until essentially the latter 20th century! Really, grapholinguistics (or writing systems studies) is a rather new, if not embryonic field.

Language is comparatively well defined—here its important properties are its arbitrariness and its essentially indefinite expressive ability made possible by grammatical structures. The general consensus among writing systems researchers as far as I can summarize is, that indeed writing initially develops when a system of signs can encode some spoken language such that it can substitute for speech and still communicate roughly what was intended.

If I understand what issue you're raising here, of course it's then understood that spoken language and written language (as well as signed language!) are meaningfully distinct "modes" where fundamental material and cognitive factors make different expressions possible or probable—writing is studied in its own right because it is not merely ossified speech after all, just as linguistics exploded out of philology because it was not merely messy writing.

I'm not sure if the bits I've written and illustrated on Writing system and Written language are useful to you here? If not, I cannot more strongly recommend:

• Meletis, Dimitrios; Dürscheid, Christa (2022). Writing Systems and Their Use: An Overview of Grapholinguistics. Trends in Linguistics. Vol. 369. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-3-11-075777-4.

which is available via TWL—I imagine much of the theoretical material will be really fascinating to you! Hopefully I can represent it better on here, part of my excitement is indeed that this is a relatively new field... Remsense 🌈 论 14:31, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

My point mainly is that the idea of writing as metalinguistic with respect to speech (i.e. written language as an image of spoken language) is no more tenable today. I think that Meletis and Dürscheid also make that clear. Once again, this is not something to fully discuss in WP, but this article might at least mention the problem and hint to modern discussions of it. Early in the article, one reads "True writing, where the content of linguistic utterances can be accurately reconstructed by later readers," as if "true" writing can only be a reconstruction of "linguistic utterances" which, in turn, probably could only be spoken. Didn't Derrida "deconstruct" such ideas? — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 07:55, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

You're gesturing to the observation that I can pick up Shakespeare and know what he said even if his way of speech was totally unknown to me? It's early, but the argument that writing is the actual death of the author before there was such a role. Remsense 🌈 论 08:09, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't quite understand you here. Shakespeare's "way of speech" obviously is unknown to all of us, and what he wrote was not intended to be heard from his own voice (he couldn't have spoken all the roles at the same time), but from that of the actors. We have no way of knowing what he said, only what he wrote.

My point merely is that either the article is about the history of writing in general, or only about verbal writing. Not only does it not say which, but it appears to believe that verbal writing is the only "true" writing. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:25, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

I was going off on a tangent based on a point I thought you might be gesturing to, sorry. Like I said, I agree this article should make its definition of writing more clear, like I've done with related articles I've been working on. Remsense 🌈 论 20:27, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

@Hucbald.SaintAmand, is the definition presently given in the § Terminology section insufficient, do you think? Remsense 🌈 论 20:35, 12 June 2025 (UTC)

Well, @Remsense, it still says "Thirdly, the symbols used in writing generally correspond to elements of spoken language," pointing to speech... But I won't further argue.

One aspect that strikes me, in the case of early musical writings, is that they were all "alphabetic" in a wide meaning of the term (one sign per musical note) even in cultures were verbal writing was not alphabetic. The reason most probably is that the first usage of musical writing was not to notate sound music, but to describe and discuss musical scales. This seems to correspond to early usages of verbal writing, to write down informations which often were not spoken.

When the article says that writing systems "require knowledge of an associated language to read a text" it appears to consider that languages necessarily are verbal. So the question boils down to this: is music a language? I think it is. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 08:57, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

I really apologize if I'm being obtuse, but to the best of my knowledge glottographic writing is the definition of writing adopted by most scholars. Of course, I agree music is a language in the sense that it uses cultural rules to arrange comparatively arbitrary units of sensation in order to create meaning (just trying to articulate that on the spot, hopefully you get what I mean), but in my experience, off the cuff (I studied composition for about a decade, just to hopefully signal I'm not talking completely speculatively) music best communicates the Non-conceptual, whereas language (speech) supplies the very bits and pieces we use to articulate the conceptual at all—programmatic music is a good illustration of the difference, maybe. I can play Vivaldi's Winter and they can feel profound and textured dread, but I don't think the specifics of the program if withheld can ever be pulled back out of the music by a virgin listener. Does that make sense? Music is real communication that lives beneath, above, and around words, but words for most at least are uniquely (though imperfectly) capable of precise, arbitrary communication between humans who share a language. Remsense 🌈 论 09:12, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

What about reading?

It strikes me that the article, as it stands today, never mentions the matter of "reading" which, after all, is the main purpose of writing; nor the relation to "speaking." I mentioned this above about Musical Writing, but I think that something should be said about it, even without consideration of musical notation. The idea that written language is "metalinguistic" (the word never appears in the article) with respect to spoken language often has been discussed (and contested) by modern linguists and there should be enough references about this to justify at least a short mention. This is not really my domain, however, and I leave it to others. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 20:05, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree! Reading, and literacy in toto are two items on my list for what this article should have. I realize I seem to work painfully slowly—I'm too much of a perfectionist. :( I hope it's not frustrating to others. Remsense 🌈 论 20:52, 1 August 2025 (UTC)

@Hucbald.SaintAmand do you think discussion of literacy is better treated interpolated throughout the existing sections, or should the existing § Psychological implications section be expanded into a parallel history of literacy? I still struggle with how to structure this article on the highest level. Remsense 🌈 论 15:00, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

@Remsense, shouldn't the article include a section on semiotics? I'd think that several important discussions of writing remain absent in the article, e.g. by Jakobson, Barthes, Derrida, Benveniste, Roy Harris, Klinkenberg, and many others, who seem to consider writing from a semiotic point of view. Some of them also consider the history of writing and, of course, that of reading. And a section on semiotics would seem to me more open and more general than the one on psychological implications. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 16:23, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

"Views on writing" is another section, which would've absolutely mentioned Benveniste, Barthes, Harris, Derrida at a minimum, plus variously Plato, Kircher, Rousseau, Saussure, Hegel, Paul, Bloomfield...thank you so much for making me aware of Benveniste, Jakobson etc.! If you have specific recommendations of works to cite or search for, your help has already been invaluable, as much as it's not a burden on you. Remsense 🌈 论 17:33, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

@Remsense, here is my (first) answer to your request about works to cite or search. Most of these are about the semiotics of writing, and I gave preeminence whenever possible to English translations. I didn't retain those specifically about musical writing, even although this is the main reason why I was interested in them. I didn't find Internet links for all of them (although I must have found them at some point, I have all these works on my hard disk), but you might be more lucky. In any case, with these, you have enough work for a few days ;–)).

• Ignace J. Gelb. A Study of Writing. University of Chicago Press, 1952.
• Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, W. Baskin transl. New York, The Philosophical Library.
• Roman Jakobson. Selected Writings. I. Phonological Studies. ‘s-Gravenhage, Mouton & Co, 1962.
• Émile Benveniste. Problèmes de linguistique générale 1. Paris, Gallimard, 1966.
• Nelson Goodman. Languages of Art. An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Bobbs-Merrill Co, 1968.
• Roman Jakobson. Selected Writings. II. Word and Language. The Hague, Paris, Mouton, 1971.
• Émile Benveniste. Problèmes de linguistique générale 2. Paris, Gallimard, 1974.
• Roland Barthes. Image Music Text. St. Heath transl. Fontana Press, 1977.
• Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.). A Perfusion of Signs. Indiana UP, 1977.
• Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word. London, New York, Routledge, 1982.
• Roy Harris. The Origin of Writing. London, Duckworth, 1986.
• Algirdas J. Greimas. On Meaning. Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory. P. J. Perron, F. H. Collins transl. University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
• Wayne M. Senner (ed.). The Origins of Writing. University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
• Pamela Downing, Susan D. Lima and Michael Noonan (ed.). The Linguistics of Literacy. Amsterdam, Philadelhia, John Benjamins Publishing Co, 1992.
• Winfried Nöth. Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1995.
• Gérard Genette. The Work of Art. Immanence and Transcendence. G. M. Goshgarian transl. Cornell UP, 1997.
• Jacques Anis. "Vers une sémiolinguistique de l’écrit." Linx 43 (2000), pp. 29-44.
• Jacques Anis, André Eskénazi, Jean-François Jeandillou (ed.). Le Signe et la lettre. Hommage à Michel Arrivé. Paris, L’Harmattan, 2002.
• Jean-Marie Klinkenberg. "Vers une typologie générale des fonctions de l’écriture : l’écriture comme image." Visible 2 (2006), pp. 83-108.
• Abraham Solomonick. A Theory of General Semiotics. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
• Isabelle Klock-Fontanille. "Repenser l’écriture. Pour une grammatologie intégrationnelle." Actes sémiotiques 119 (2016), pp. 1-15.
• Luc Bachelot. Aventures et mésaventures de l’écriture. À propos de l’interprétation de la naissance de l’écriture en Mésopotamie. Cadernos do Lepaarq XIV/28 (2017), pp. 127-155.
• Émile Benveniste. Last Lectures: Collège de France 1968 and 1969. J. E. Joseph transl. Edinburgh UP, 2019.
• Isabelle Klock-Fontanille. "La Science de l’écriture et la linguistique : Benveniste, l’artisan de la (ré)conciliation ?" SHS Web of Conferences 78, 15003 (2020), pp. 1-20.
• Dimitrios Meletis, Christa Dürscheid. Writing Systems and Their Use. An Overview of Grapholinguistics. De Gruyter, Mouton, 2022.

— Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 17:58, 7 August 2025 (UTC)