Writing  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 15:52, 2 January 2013

This page Writing is part of the linguistics series.
Illustration: a close-up of a mouth in the film The Big Swallow (1901)

The Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-Louis David

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literature, reading, letter

Writing, in its most common sense, is the preservation and the preserved text on a medium, with the use of signs or symbols. In that regard, it is to be distinguished from illustrating such as cave drawings and paintings on the one hand, and authoring such as tape recordings, and film or movies, on the other. Writing was first invented by the ancient Mesopotamians.

Historical significance of writing systems

Historians draw a distinction between prehistory and history, with history defined by the advent of writing. The cave paintings and petroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can be considered precursors of writing, but are not considered writing because they did not represent language directly.

Namesakes

• Writing on Drugs
• The Writing of the Disaster
• Writing and Difference
• Writing Degree Zero

See also

• Effects of movable type printing on culture
• Walter Benjamin on the importance of printing and movable type
• Constrained writing
• Automatic writing
• Women's writing in English
• Writing process
• Travel writing