I. THE HISTORY OF WRITING.

‘The history of writing is the history of variations and their causes’. Stanley Morison suggests as the chief causes of variation: (a) Necessity for speed; (b) Reservation of special hands for certain purposes; (c) Change in the nature of the materials and tools of writing, and in the manner of their employment.

The earliest method of communication and transmission of thought was by means of words: story-telling. Memory aids followed as the “Knot-writing” of the Peruvians and various drawings and picture writings, e.g. the one the American Indians used until fairly recent times (Pictographs). The Egyptians used Hieroglyphics which were of five kinds:

• 1. Thing-pictures = Pictograms.

• 2. Idea-pictures = Ideograms.

• 3. Word-sound pictures = Phonograms.

• 4. Syllable-sound pictures.

• 5. Letter-sound pictures.

The Chinese still use hieroglyphics and write in the same way as the Egyptians used to, i.e. from the top of the page to the bottom. Chinese ink is very quick-drying, but Egyptian not, and when they found that they smeared the first line when writing the second they changed to writing horizontally, and since the scribe kept the roll in his left hand while writing, he wrote from left to right.

The Hieroglyphics changed gradually to Hieratic (Greek: hieratikos = priestly) writing, a sort of speeded-up form of their writing.

The Phoenicians brought writing another step forward. They probably got most of their characters from the sound-symbols of the Egyptian hieratic writing about 1,200 B.C., but may also have been influenced by the cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Hittites, all of which were Ideograms. The Phoenician alphabet had no vowels and was written from right to left.