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 non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.

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 in Mesopotamia outgrew human memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form. In both Ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica writing may have evolved through calendrics and a political necessity for recording historical and environmental events. The oldest known use of writing in China was in divination in the royal court.

Read more about Writing:  Writing As A Category, Means For Recording Information

Famous quotes containing the word writing:

    Life.—No, I’ve nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)

    No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
    Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

    England has the most sordid literary scene I’ve ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy’s writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They’re all scratching each other’s backs.
    William Burroughs (b. 1914)