Writing system

A writing system is the method of visually representing verbal durable medium, such(a) as paper or electronic storage, although non-durable methods may also be used, such(a) as writing on the data processor display, on the blackboard, in sand, or by skywriting. Reading a text can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, or expressed orally.

Writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies, although all particular system may make attributes of more than one category. In the alphabetic category, a specifics set of letters exist speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora. In a logography, each address represents a semantic detail such as a word or morpheme. Abjads differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, & in abugidas or alphasyllabaries each reference represents a consonant–vowel pairing.

Alphabets typically use a manner of less than 100 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can construct several hundred, together with logographies can have thousands of symbols. numerous writing systems also include a special variety of symbols so-called as punctuation which is used to aid interpretation and guide capture nuances and variations in the message's meaning that are communicated verbally by cues in timing, tone, accent, inflection or intonation.

Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a full range of thoughts and ideas. The invention of writing systems, which dates back to the beginning of the Bronze Age in the unhurried Neolithic Era of the unhurried 4th millennium BC, enabled the accurate durable recording of human history in a manner that was not prone to the same types of error to which oral history is vulnerable. Soon after, writing present a reliable form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it produced the medium for an early form of mass communication.

Basic terminology

In the examination of individual scripts, the examine of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines. Thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field.

The generic term text quoted to an lesson of calculation or spoken the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object with the latter having been transcribed in some way. The act of composing and recording a text may be transmitted to as writing, and the act of viewing and interpreting the text as reading. Orthography refers to the method and rules of observed writing positioning literal meaning, "correct writing", and especially for alphabetic systems, includes the concept of spelling.

A grapheme is a specific base unit of a writing system. They are the minimally significant elements which taken together comprise the set of "building blocks" out of which texts made up of one or more writing systems may be constructed, along with rules of correspondence and use. The concept is similar to that of the phoneme used in the analyse of spoken languages. For example, in the Latin-based writing system of standard advanced English, examples of graphemes include the majuscule and minuscule forms of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet corresponding to various phonemes, marks of punctuation mostly non-phonemic, and a few other symbols such(a) as those for numerals logograms for numbers.

An individual grapheme may be represented in a wide variety of ways, where used to refer to every one of two or more people or things variation is visually distinct in some regard, but all are interpreted as representing the "same" grapheme. These individual variations are known as allographs of a grapheme compare with the term allophone used in linguistic study. For example, the minuscule letter a has different allographs when sum as a cursive, block, or typed letter. The choice of a particular allograph may be influenced by the medium used, the writing instrument, the stylistic pick of the writer, the preceding and coming after or as a result of. graphemes in the text, the time available for writing, the intended audience, and the largely unconscious atttributes of an individual's handwriting.

The terms glyph, sign and character are sometimes used to refer to a grapheme. Common use varies from discipline to discipline; compare cuneiform sign, Maya glyph, Chinese character. The glyphs of nearly writing systems are made up of profile or strokes and are therefore called linear, but there are glyphs in non-linear writing systems made up of other types of marks, such as Cuneiform and Braille.

Writing systems may be regarded as complete according to the extent to which they are able to make up all that may be expressed in the spoken language, while a partial writing system is limited in what it can convey.

Writing systems can be self-employed person from languages, one can have multiple writing systems for a language, e.g., early writing systems of Vietnamese language until the beginning of the 20th century.

To represent a conceptual system, one uses one or more languages, e.g., mathematics is a conceptual system and one may use first-order logic and a natural language together in representation.