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
Other articles related to "writing, writings":
... Lost Weekend, a depressing film about a writer who has trouble writing." Lost Weekend was a distinguished offspring for the reconciled couple — they left Oscar night with three Awards Best ...
... "Much of Carman's writing in poetry and prose during the decade preceding World War I is as repetitive as the title of Echoes from Vagabondia (1912) intimates" says the DCB ...
... The origin and the timing of the writings are widely disputed, because there are no precise evidence in situ, the slabs cannot be carbon dated, because of the bad treatment of the Cluj ... However, the presence of influences of Greek, Phoenician and Etruscan in the writings, make it unlikely that they date from this period ...
... The rise of cuteness in Japanese culture emerged in the 1970s as part of a new style of writing ... lines, as opposed to traditional Japanese writing that varied in thickness and was vertical ... the girls would write in big, round characters and they added little pictures to their writing, such as hearts, stars, smiley faces, and letters of the Latin alphabet ...
... As a teenager, DeLillo wasn't interested in writing until taking a summer job as a parking attendant, where hours spent waiting and watching over vehicles led to a reading habit ... golden age of reading, in my 20s and my early 30s, and then my writing began to take up so much time" ... who was a major influence on DeLillo's earliest attempts at writing in his late teens ...
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“His writing is not about something. It is the thing itself.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)