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(June 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template me ssage) Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts Writing systems worldwide.png Alphabetical Latin Cyrillic Greek Armenian Georgian Hangulaa Logographic and Syllabic Hanzi [L] Kana [S] / Kanji [L] Hanjab [L] Abjad Arabic Hebrew Abugida North Indic South Indic Ethiopic Thaana Canadian syllabic a a Featural-alphabetic. b Limited. v t e Present-day writing systems World alphabets & writing systems.svg Alphabetic Latin Cyrillic Hangul (featural) Other alphabetic Abjad Abugida Arabic (abjad) Other abjad Devanagari (abugida) Other abugida Other types Syllabaries Chinese (logographic) v t e Writing systems 09-Pismo.jpg History Grapheme List of writing systems Types Alphabet Abjad Abugida Syllabary Logography Shorthand Featural Related topics Pictogram Ideogram v t e A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal comm unication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writi ng differs in also being a reliable form of information storage and transfer.[1] The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understan ding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters th at make up a script. Writing is usually recorded onto a durable medium, such as paper or electronic storage, although non-durable methods may also be used, such as writing on a computer display, in sand, or by skywriting. The general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories su ch as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have at tributes of more than one category. In the alphabetic category, there is a stand ard set of letters (basic written symbols or graphemes) of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters (or letter pair/gro ups) represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllab le or mora. In a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or othe r semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets i n that vowels are not indicated, and abugidas or alphasyllabaries, with each cha racter representing a consonant±vowel pairing. Alphabets typically use a set of 20 -to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-1 00, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Most systems will typically have an ordering of its symbol elements so that grou ps of them can be coded into larger clusters like words or acronyms (generally l exemes), giving rise to many more possibilities (permutations) in meanings than the symbols can convey by themselves. Systems will also enable the stringing tog ether of these smaller groupings (sometimes referred to by the generic term 'cha racter strings') in order to enable a full expression of the language. The readi ng step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, or expres sed orally. A special set of symbols known as punctuation is used to aid in stru cture and organization of many writing systems and can be used to help capture n uances and variations in the message's meaning that are communicated verbally by cues in timing, tone, accent, inflection or intonation. A writing system will a lso typically have a method for formatting recorded messages that follows the sp oken version's rules like its grammar and syntax so that the reader will have th e meaning of the intended message accurately preserved. Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and exp ress a full range of thoughts and ideas. The invention of writing systems, which dates back to the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic Era of the late 4th millennium BCE, 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 provided a reliable form of long distance co mmunication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for an early form of mass communication. Secure written communications were also made more re liable with the invention of encryption. Contents [hide] 1 General properties 2 Basic terminology 3 History 4 Functional classification 4.1 Logographic systems 4.2 Syllabic systems: syllabary 4.3 Segmental systems: Alphabets 4.4 Featural systems 4.5 Ambiguous systems 5 Graphic classification 6 Directionality 7 On computers 8 See also 9 References 9.1 Citations 9.2 Sources 10 External links General properties[edit] Chinese characters (漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a d istinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciation s Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication sys tems in that a writing system is always associated with at least one spoken lang uage. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-v erbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some symbo ls on information signs, such as the symbols for male and female, are also not l anguage related, but can grow to become part of language if they are often used in conjunction with other language elements. Some other symbols, such as numeral s and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, but are o ften used in writing and thus must be considered part of writing systems. Every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and def ining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and th e process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communicatio n, have been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems genera lly change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. One of the great benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. All writing systems require: at least one set of defined base elements or symbols, individually termed signs and collectively called a script;[2] at least one set of rules and conventions (orthography) understood and shared by a community, which assigns meaning to the base elements (graphemes), their orde ring and relations to one another; at least one language (generally spoken) whose constructions are represented and can be recalled by the interpretation of these elements and rules; some physical means of distinctly representing the symbols by application to a p ermanent or semi-permanent medium, so they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised). Basic terminology[edit] A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has devel oped along partially independent lines. Thus, the terminology employed differs s omewhat from field to field. The generic term text refers to an instance of written material. The act of comp osing and recording a text may be referred to as writing, and the act of viewing and interpreting the text as reading. Orthography refers to the method and rule s of observed writing structure (literal meaning, "correct writing"), and partic ularly for alphabetic systems, includes the concept of spelling. A grapheme is a specific base unit of a writing system. Graphemes are the minima lly significant elements which taken together comprise the set of "building bloc ks" 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 study of spoken languages. For example, in the Latin-bas ed writing system of standard contemporary English, examples of graphemes includ e the majuscule and minuscule forms of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet (c orresponding to various phonemes), marks of punctuation (mostly non-phonemic), a nd a few other symbols such as those for numerals (logograms for numbers). An individual grapheme may be represented in a wide variety of ways, where each variation is visually distinct in some regard, but all are interpreted as repres enting the "same" grapheme. These individual variations are known as allographs of a grapheme (compare with the term allophone used in linguistic study). For ex ample, the minuscule letter a has different allographs when written 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 choice of the writer, the preceding and following graphemes in the text, the time available for writi ng, the intended audience, and the largely unconscious features of an individual 's handwriting. The terms glyph, sign and character are sometimes used to refer to a grapheme. C ommon usage varies from discipline to discipline; compare cuneiform sign, Maya g lyph, Chinese character. The glyphs of most writing systems are made up of lines (or strokes) and are therefore called linear, but there are glyphs in non-linea r writing systems made up of other types of marks, such as Cuneiform and Braille .