Writing

Writing (some form of כָּתִב, kathab, γραφή) is the art of expressing thought by letters or other marks. See LETTER.

I. Origin and Various Kinds of Writings. — Language expresses thought, preserves thought, and also suggests or creates thought. But it is obvious that, so long as language is unwritten, it can accomplish these ends only in a very imperfect measure. Hence we may well suppose that, at a very early stage of man's history, attempts were made to present in some way to the eye the thought which spoken language conveyed to the ear, and thus give it visible form and permanence. But we cannot wonder that no record remains of the origin of an art, the beginnings of which must be placed in the political infancy of mankind. Pliny speaks of the "aeternus literarum usus" (N.H. 7:56).

The various kinds of writing which have been in use in different ages and in different parts of the world may be classified in two great divisions, according as the object of their inventors was to present the ideas to which they wished to give visible expression directly and immediately to the mind, or indirectly, through the medium of spoken language. Each of these methods the ideographic and the phonographic or phonetic has its attendant advantages and disadvantages; but the advantages of the latter method greatly preponderate. The principal recommendation of the former method, in which the depicted idea is caught up immediately by the mind, is that it addresses itself to a much wider circle than the latter, being intelligible, so far as it is intelligible, alike by all classes and in all countries; whereas the latter, in which the word is depicted, not the idea, is of course intelligible only to those who are acquainted with the language to which the depicted word belongs. On the other hand, the very serious drawbacks attendant upon the direct method are (1) that it is capable of giving distinct expression only to a very limited range of ideas, viz. the ideas of sensible objects and qualities, and if it attempts to go beyond that range at once becomes arbitrary and obscure; and (2) that in its representation even of the limited class of ideas to which it is capable of giving distinct expression, it is cumbrous and altogether unfitted for general use.