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Writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are
useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form of information storage and transfer.[1]
Writing systems require shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of
characters that 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, on a blackboard, in
sand, or by skywriting. Reading a text can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, or expressed
orally.

Writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies, although any
particular system may have attributes of more than one category. In the alphabetic category, a standard set of letters
represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora. In a logography, each character
represents a semantic unit such as a word or morpheme. Abjads differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated,
and in abugidas or alphasyllabaries each character represents a consonant–vowel pairing. Alphabets typically use a set
of less than 100 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have several hundred, and logographies
can have thousands of symbols. Many writing systems also include a special set of symbols known as punctuation to
help capture nuances and variations in the message's meaning that are communicated verbally by cues in timing, tone,
accent, inflection or intonation.

Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols.
Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express 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 BC,
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 communication. With the
advent of publishing, it provided the medium for an early form of mass communication.

Contents
General properties
Basic terminology
Text, writing, reading and orthography
Grapheme and phoneme
Glyph, sign and character
Complete and partial writing systems
Writing systems, languages and conceptual systems
History
Functional classification
Logographic systems
Syllabic systems: syllabary
Segmental systems: alphabets
Featural systems
Ambiguous systems
Graphic classification
Directionality
On computers
See also

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References
Citations
Sources
External links

General properties
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic
communication systems in that a writing system is always associated with
at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as
drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines,
are not language-related. Some symbols on information signs, such as the
symbols for male and female, are also not language 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 numerals and the
ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, but are often
used in writing and thus must be considered part of writing systems.

Every human community possesses language, which many regard as an

innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of Chinese characters ( 漢字 ) are
morpho-syllabic. Each one
writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional
represents a syllable with a distinct
oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once meaning, but some characters may
established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their have multiple meanings or
spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions pronunciations
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 ordering 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 permanent or semi-permanent
medium, so they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised).

Basic terminology
In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines.
Thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field.

Text, writing, reading and orthography

The generic term text[3] refers to an instance of written or spoken material with the latter having been transcribed in
some way. The act of composing and recording a text may be referred to as writing,[4] and the act of viewing and
interpreting the text as reading.[5] Orthography refers to the method and rules of observed writing structure (literal
meaning, "correct writing"), and particularly for alphabetic systems, includes the concept of spelling.

Grapheme and phoneme

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A grapheme is a specific base unit of a writing system. Graphemes are the

minimally significant elements which taken together comprise the set of
"building blocks" 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-based writing system of standard
contemporary English, examples of graphemes include the majuscule and
minuscule forms of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet (corresponding to
various phonemes), marks of punctuation (mostly non-phonemic), and 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 representing the "same" grapheme. These individual
variations are known as allographs of a grapheme (compare with the term
allophone used in linguistic study). For example, the minuscule letter a has A Specimen of typefaces and styles,
by William Caslon, letter founder;
different allographs when written as a cursive, block, or typed letter. The
from the 1728 Cyclopaedia
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 writing, the intended audience, and the largely unconscious
features of an individual's handwriting.

Glyph, sign and character

The terms glyph, sign and character are sometimes used to refer to a grapheme. Common usage varies from discipline
to discipline; compare cuneiform sign, Maya glyph, 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-linear writing systems made up of other
types of marks, such as Cuneiform and Braille.

Complete and partial writing systems

Writing systems may be regarded as complete according to the extent to which they are able to represent all that may
be expressed in the spoken language, while a partial writing system is limited in what it can convey.[6]

Writing systems, languages and conceptual systems

Writing systems can be independent from languages, one can have multiple writing systems for a language, e.g., Hindi
and Urdu;[7] and one can also have one writing system for multiple languages, e.g., the Arabic script. Chinese
characters were also borrowed by variant countries as their early writing systems, e.g., the early writing systems of
Vietnamese language until the beginning of the 20th century.

To represent a conceptual system, one uses one or more languages, e.g., mathematics is a conceptual system[8] and one
may use first-order logic and a natural language together in representation.

History
Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best
known examples are:

Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, c. 6600 BC

Vinča symbols (Tărtăria tablets), c.5300 BC

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Early Indus script, c. 3500 BC.

Nsibidi script, c. before 500 AD
The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the
beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium
BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs
are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of
their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BC with
earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC. It is generally agreed that
Sumerian writing was an independent invention; however, it is debated
whether Egyptian writing was developed completely independently of
Sumerian, or was a case of cultural diffusion.

A similar debate exists for the Chinese script, which developed around 1200
BC.[9][10] Chinese script are probably an independent invention, because
there is no evidence of contact between China and the literate civilizations
of the Near East,[11] and because of the distinct differences between the
Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to logography and phonetic
representation.[12] Comparative evolution from
pictograms to abstract shapes, in
The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian
others Olmec and Maya scripts) are generally believed to have had hieroglyphs and Chinese
independent origins. characters.

A hieroglyphic writing system used by pre-colonial Mi'kmaq, that was

observed by missionaries from the 17th to 19th centuries, is thought to have developed independently. Although, there
is some debate over whether or not this was a fully formed system or just a series of mnemonic pictographs.

It is thought that the first consonantal alphabetic writing appeared before 2000 BC, as a representation of language
developed by Semitic tribes in the Sinai-peninsula (see History of the alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world
today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its
design.

The first true alphabet is the Greek script which consistently represents vowels since 800 BC.[13][14] The Latin
alphabet, a direct descendant, is by far the most common writing system in use.[15]

Functional classification
Several approaches have been taken to classify writing systems, the most common and basic one is a broad division
into three categories: logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic (or segmental); however, all three may be found in any
given writing system in varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorise a system uniquely. The term
complex system is sometimes used to describe those where the admixture makes classification problematic. Modern
linguists regard such approaches, including Diringer's[16]

pictographic script
ideographic script
analytic transitional script
phonetic script
alphabetic script
as too simplistic, often considering the categories to be incomparable. Hill[17] split writing into three major categories
of linguistic analysis, one of which covers discourses and is not usually considered writing proper:

discourse system

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iconic discourse system, e.g. Amerindian

conventional discourse system, e.g. Quipu
morphemic writing system, e.g. Egyptian, Sumerian, Maya, Chinese
phonemic writing system

partial phonemic writing system, e.g. Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic

poly-phonemic writing system, e.g. Linear B, Kana, Cherokee
mono-phonemic writing system

phonemic writing system, e.g. Ancient Greek, Old English

morpho-phonemic writing system, e.g. German, Modern English

Sampson draws a distinction between semasiography and glottography

semasiography, relating visible marks to meaning directly without

reference to any specific spoken language
glottography, using visible marks to represent forms of a spoken
language

logography, representing a spoken language by assigning

distinctive visible marks to linguistic elements of André Martinet's
"first articulation" (Martinet 1949), i.e. morphemes or words
phonography, achieving the same goal by assigning marks to Table of scripts in the introduction to
elements of the "second articulation", e.g. phonemes, syllables Sanskrit-English Dictionary by
Monier Monier-Williams
DeFrancis,[18] criticizing Sampson's[19] introduction of semasiographic
writing and featural alphabets stresses the phonographic quality of writing
proper

pictures

nonwriting
writing

rebus

syllabic systems

pure syllabic, e.g. Linear B, Yi, Kana, Cherokee

morpho-syllabic, e.g. Sumerian, Chinese, Mayan This textbook for Puyi shows the
consonantal English alphabet. Although the
English letters run from left to right,
morpho-consonantal, e.g. Egyptian the Chinese explanations run from
pure consonantal, e.g. Phoenician top to bottom then right to left, as
alphabetic traditionally written
pure phonemic, e.g. Greek
morpho-phonemic, e.g. English

Faber[20] categorizes phonographic writing by two levels, linearity and coding:

logographic, e.g. Chinese, Ancient Egyptian

phonographic

syllabically linear

syllabically coded, e.g. Kana, Akkadian

segmentally coded, e.g. Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Amharic, Devanagari
segmentally linear

complete (alphabet), e.g. Greco-Latin, Cyrillic

defective, e.g. Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Old South Arabian, Paleo-Hebrew

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Classification by Daniels[21]
Type Each symbol represents Example
Logosyllabary word or morpheme as well as syllable Chinese characters
Syllabary syllable Japanese kana
Abjad (consonantary) consonant Arabic alphabet
Alphabet consonant or vowel Latin alphabet
consonant accompanied by specific vowel,
Abugida Indian Devanagari
modifying symbols represent other vowels
Featural system distinctive feature of segment Korean Hangul

Logographic systems
A logogram is a single written character which represents a complete
grammatical word. Most traditional Chinese characters are classified as
logograms.

As each character represents a single word (or, more precisely, a

morpheme), many logograms are required to write all the words of
language. The vast array of logograms and the memorization of what they
mean are major disadvantages of logographic systems over alphabetic
systems. However, since the meaning is inherent to the symbol, the same
logographic system can theoretically be used to represent different
languages. In practice, the ability to communicate across languages only
works for the closely related varieties of Chinese, as differences in syntax Early Chinese character for sun (ri),
reduce the crosslinguistic portability of a given logographic system. 1200 B.C
Japanese uses Chinese logograms extensively in its writing systems, with
most of the symbols carrying the same or similar meanings. However, the
grammatical differences between Japanese and Chinese are significant
enough that a long Chinese text is not readily understandable to a Japanese
reader without any knowledge of basic Chinese grammar, though short and
concise phrases such as those on signs and newspaper headlines are much
easier to comprehend.

While most languages do not use wholly logographic writing systems, many
languages use some logograms. A good example of modern western
logograms are the Hindu-Arabic numerals: everyone who uses those
symbols understands what 1 means whether they call it one, eins, uno, yi,
ichi, ehad, ena, or jedan. Other western logograms include the ampersand
&, used for and, the at sign @, used in many contexts for at, the percent Modern Chinese character (ri)
sign % and the many signs representing units of currency ($, ¢, €, £, ¥ and meaning "day" or "Sun"
so on.)

Logograms are sometimes called ideograms, a word that refers to symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas,
but linguists avoid this use, as Chinese characters are often semantic–phonetic compounds, symbols which include an
element that represents the meaning and a phonetic complement element that represents the pronunciation. Some
nonlinguists distinguish between lexigraphy and ideography, where symbols in lexigraphies represent words and
symbols in ideographies represent words or morphemes.

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The most important (and, to a degree, the only surviving) modern logographic writing system is the Chinese one,
whose characters have been used with varying degrees of modification in varieties of Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
Vietnamese, and other east Asian languages. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Mayan writing system are also
systems with certain logographic features, although they have marked phonetic features as well and are no longer in
current use. Vietnamese speakers switched to the Latin alphabet in the 20th century and the use of Chinese characters
in Korean is increasingly rare. The Japanese writing system includes several distinct forms of writing including
logography.

Syllabic systems: syllabary

Another type of writing system with systematic syllabic linear symbols,
the abugidas, is discussed below as well.

As logographic writing systems use a single symbol for an entire word, a

syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate)
syllables, which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary typically represents
a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound, or just a vowel alone.

In a "true syllabary", there is no systematic graphic similarity between

phonetically related characters (though some do have graphic similarity for
the vowels). That is, the characters for /ke/, /ka/ and /ko/ have no
similarity to indicate their common "k" sound (voiceless velar plosive).
More recent creations such as the Cree syllabary embody a system of
varying signs, which can best be seen when arranging the syllabogram set
in an onset–coda or onset–rime table.

Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable

structure, such as Japanese. The English language, on the other hand,
allows complex syllable structures, with a relatively large inventory of Bilingual stop sign in English and
vowels and complex consonant clusters, making it cumbersome to write the Cherokee syllabary, Tahlequah,
English words with a syllabary. To write English using a syllabary, every Oklahoma
possible syllable in English would have to have a separate symbol, and
whereas the number of possible syllables in Japanese is around 100, in
English there are approximately 15,000 to 16,000.

However, syllabaries with much larger inventories do exist. The Yi script, for example, contains 756 different symbols
(or 1,164, if symbols with a particular tone diacritic are counted as separate syllables, as in Unicode). The Chinese
script, when used to write Middle Chinese and the modern varieties of Chinese, also represents syllables, and includes
separate glyphs for nearly all of the many thousands of syllables in Middle Chinese; however, because it primarily
represents morphemes and includes different characters to represent homophonous morphemes with different
meanings, it is normally considered a logographic script rather than a syllabary.

Other languages that use true syllabaries include Mycenaean Greek (Linear B) and Indigenous languages of the
Americas such as Cherokee. Several languages of the Ancient Near East used forms of cuneiform, which is a syllabary
with some non-syllabic elements.

Segmental systems: alphabets

An alphabet is a small set of letters (basic written symbols), each of which roughly represents or represented
historically a segmental phoneme of a spoken language. The word alphabet is derived from alpha and beta, the first
two symbols of the Greek alphabet.

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The first type of alphabet that was developed was the abjad. An abjad is an alphabetic writing system where there is
one symbol per consonant. Abjads differ from other alphabets in that they have characters only for consonantal
sounds. Vowels are not usually marked in abjads.

All known abjads (except maybe Tifinagh) belong to the Semitic family of scripts, and derive from the original
Northern Linear Abjad. The reason for this is that Semitic languages and the related Berber languages have a
morphemic structure which makes the denotation of vowels redundant in most cases.

Some abjads, like Arabic and Hebrew, have markings for vowels as well. However, they use them only in special
contexts, such as for teaching. Many scripts derived from abjads have been extended with vowel symbols to become full
alphabets. Of these, the most famous example is the derivation of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician abjad. This
has mostly happened when the script was adapted to a non-Semitic language.

The term abjad takes its name from the old order of the Arabic alphabet's consonants 'alif, bā', jīm, dāl, though the
word may have earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic. "Abjad" is still the word for alphabet in Arabic, Malay and
Indonesian.

An abugida is an alphabetic writing system whose basic signs denote

consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of
the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one.

Thus, in an abugida there may or may not be a sign for "k" with no vowel,
but also one for "ka" (if "a" is the inherent vowel), and "ke" is written by
modifying the "ka" sign in a way that is consistent with how one would
modify "la" to get "le". In many abugidas the modification is the addition of
a vowel sign, but other possibilities are imaginable (and used), such as
rotation of the basic sign, addition of diacritical marks and so on.

The contrast with "true syllabaries" is that the latter have one distinct A Bible printed with Balinese script
symbol per possible syllable, and the signs for each syllable have no
systematic graphic similarity. The graphic similarity of most abugidas
comes from the fact that they are derived from abjads, and the consonants make up the symbols with the inherent
vowel and the new vowel symbols are markings added on to the base symbol.

In the Ge'ez script, for which the linguistic term abugida was named, the vowel modifications do not always appear
systematic, although they originally were more so. Canadian Aboriginal syllabics can be considered abugidas, although
they are rarely thought of in those terms. The largest single group of abugidas is the Brahmic family of scripts,
however, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia.

The name abugida is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Ge'ez script used in some contexts. It was
borrowed from Ethiopian languages as a linguistic term by Peter T. Daniels.

Featural systems
A featural script represents finer detail than an alphabet. Here symbols do not represent whole phonemes, but rather
the elements (features) that make up the phonemes, such as voicing or its place of articulation. Theoretically, each
feature could be written with a separate letter; and abjads or abugidas, or indeed syllabaries, could be featural, but the
only prominent system of this sort is Korean hangul. In hangul, the featural symbols are combined into alphabetic
letters, and these letters are in turn joined into syllabic blocks, so that the system combines three levels of phonological
representation.

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Many scholars, e.g. John DeFrancis, reject this class or at least labeling hangul as such. The Korean script is a
conscious script creation by literate experts, which Daniels calls a "sophisticated grammatogeny". These include
stenographies and constructed scripts of hobbyists and fiction writers (such as Tengwar), many of which feature
advanced graphic designs corresponding to phonologic properties. The basic unit of writing in these systems can map
to anything from phonemes to words. It has been shown that even the Latin script has sub-character "features".[22]

Ambiguous systems
Most writing systems are not purely one type. The English writing system, for example, includes numerals and other
logograms such as #, $, and &, and the written language often does not match well with the spoken one. As mentioned
above, all logographic systems have phonetic components as well, whether along the lines of a syllabary, such as
Chinese ("logo-syllabic"), or an abjad, as in Egyptian ("logo-consonantal").

Some scripts, however, are truly ambiguous. The semi-syllabaries of ancient Spain were syllabic for plosives such as p,
t, k, but alphabetic for other consonants. In some versions, vowels were written redundantly after syllabic letters,
conforming to an alphabetic orthography. Old Persian cuneiform was similar. Of 23 consonants (including null), seven
were fully syllabic, thirteen were purely alphabetic, and for the other three, there was one letter for /Cu/ and another
for both /Ca/ and /Ci/. However, all vowels were written overtly regardless; as in the Brahmic abugidas, the /Ca/ letter
was used for a bare consonant.

The zhuyin phonetic glossing script for Chinese divides syllables in two or three, but into onset, medial, and rime
rather than consonant and vowel. Pahawh Hmong is similar, but can be considered to divide syllables into either onset-
rime or consonant-vowel (all consonant clusters and diphthongs are written with single letters); as the latter, it is
equivalent to an abugida but with the roles of consonant and vowel reversed. Other scripts are intermediate between
the categories of alphabet, abjad and abugida, so there may be disagreement on how they should be classified.

Graphic classification
Perhaps the primary graphic distinction made in classifications is that of linearity. Linear writing systems are those in
which the characters are composed of lines, such as the Latin alphabet and Chinese characters. Chinese characters are
considered linear whether they are written with a ball-point pen or a calligraphic brush, or cast in bronze. Similarly,
Egyptian hieroglyphs and Maya glyphs were often painted in linear outline form, but in formal contexts they were
carved in bas-relief. The earliest examples of writing are linear: the Sumerian script of c. 3300 BC was linear, though
its cuneiform descendants were not. Non-linear systems, on the other hand, such as braille, are not composed of lines,
no matter what instrument is used to write them.

Cuneiform was probably the earliest non-linear writing. Its glyphs were formed by pressing the end of a reed stylus
into moist clay, not by tracing lines in the clay with the stylus as had been done previously.[23][24] The result was a
radical transformation of the appearance of the script.

Braille is a non-linear adaptation of the Latin alphabet that completely abandoned the Latin forms. The letters are
composed of raised bumps on the writing substrate, which can be leather (Louis Braille's original material), stiff paper,
plastic or metal.

There are also transient non-linear adaptations of the Latin alphabet, including Morse code, the manual alphabets of
various sign languages, and semaphore, in which flags or bars are positioned at prescribed angles. However, if
"writing" is defined as a potentially permanent means of recording information, then these systems do not qualify as
writing at all, since the symbols disappear as soon as they are used. (Instead, these transient systems serve as signals.)

Directionality

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Scripts are also graphically characterized by the direction in which they are
written. Egyptian hieroglyphs were written either left to right or right to
left, with the animal and human glyphs turned to face the beginning of the
line. The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions:[25]
horizontally (side to side), or vertically (up or down). Prior to
standardization, alphabetical writing was done both left-to-right (LTR or
sinistrodextrally) and right-to-left (RTL or dextrosinistrally). It was most
commonly written boustrophedonically: starting in one (horizontal) Overview of the writing directions
direction, then turning at the end of the line and reversing direction. used in the world

The Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern,

from the top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, came to be written right-to-left.
Scripts that incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been written vertically (top-to-bottom), from the right to
the left of the page, but nowadays are frequently written left-to-right, top-to-bottom, due to Western influence, a
growing need to accommodate terms in the Latin script, and technical limitations in popular electronic document
formats. Chinese characters sometimes, as in signage, especially when signifying something old or traditional, may also
be written from right to left. The Old Uyghur alphabet and its descendants are unique in being written top-to-bottom,
left-to-right; this direction originated from an ancestral Semitic direction by rotating the page 90° counter-clockwise to
conform to the appearance of vertical Chinese writing. Several scripts used in the Philippines and Indonesia, such as
Hanunó'o, are traditionally written with lines moving away from the writer, from bottom to top, but are read
horizontally left to right; however, Kulitan, another Philippine script, is written top to bottom and right to left. Ogham
is written bottom to top and read vertically, commonly on the corner of a stone.

On computers
In computers and telecommunication systems, writing systems are generally not codified as such, but graphemes and
other grapheme-like units that are required for text processing are represented by "characters" that typically manifest
in encoded form. There are many character encoding standards and related technologies, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1 (a
character repertoire and encoding scheme oriented toward the Latin script), CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and bi-
directional text. Today, many such standards are re-defined in a collective standard, the ISO/IEC 10646 "Universal
Character Set", and a parallel, closely related expanded work, The Unicode Standard. Both are generally encompassed
by the term Unicode. In Unicode, each character, in every language's writing system, is (simplifying slightly) given a
unique identification number, known as its code point. Computer operating systems use code points to look up
characters in the font file, so the characters can be displayed on the page or screen.

A keyboard is the device most commonly used for writing via computer. Each key is associated with a standard code
which the keyboard sends to the computer when it is pressed. By using a combination of alphabetic keys with modifier
keys such as Ctrl, Alt, Shift and AltGr, various character codes are generated and sent to the CPU. The operating system
intercepts and converts those signals to the appropriate characters based on the keyboard layout and input method,
and then delivers those converted codes and characters to the running application software, which in turn looks up the
appropriate glyph in the currently used font file, and requests the operating system to draw these on the screen.

See also
Artificial script Epigraphy Orthography Numeral system
Calligraphy Formal language Pasigraphy Transliteration
Defective script Grammatology Penmanship Writing
Digraphia ISO 15924 Paleography Written language

References
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Citations
1. "Definitions of writing systems" (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/definition.htm). Omniglot: The Online
Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages. www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 2013-06-29.
2. Coulmas, Florian. 2003. Writing systems. An introduction. Cambridge University Press. pg. 35.
3. David Crystal (2008), A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th Edition (http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTit
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ylus). Mesopotamia. XLIX: 53–90 – via https://osf.io/dfng4/.
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External links
Writing Systems Research (http://writsy.oxfordjournals.org/current.dtl/) Free first issue of a journal devoted to
research on writing systems
Arch Chinese (Traditional & Simplified) (http://www.archchinese.com/) Chinese character writing animations and
native speaker pronunciations
Sensible Chinese (https://sensiblechinese.com/how-to-learn-chinese-characters) A practical guide to approaching
the Chinese writing system
decodeunicode (https://web.archive.org/web/20140312143430/http://www.decodeunicode.org/) Unicode Wiki with
all 98,884 Unicode 5.0 characters as gifs in three sizes
African writing systems (http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Welcome.html)
Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages (http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm)
Ancient Scripts (http://www.ancientscripts.com/ws.html) Introduction to different writing systems
Alphabets of Europe (http://www.evertype.com/alphabets/index.html)
Elian script (http://www.ccelian.com/ElianScriptFull.html) a writing system that combines the linearity of spelling
with the free-form aspects of drawing.
(in Russian) Written of the World (http://www.rbardalzo.narod.ru/vse_alf.html)
(in Hungarian) Ultraweb.hu – főoldal (http://123456789101112.uw.hu)

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