History of Writing

by Steven Roger Fischer

From the earliest scratches on stone and bone to the languages of computers and the internet, A History of Writing offers a fascinating investigation into the origin and development of writing throughout the world.

Commencing with the first stages of information storage, Fischer focuses on the emergence of complete writing systems in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. He documents the rise of Phoenician and its effect on the Greek alphabet, generating the many alphabetic scripts of the West. Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese writing systems are dealt with in depth, as is writing in pre-Columbian America. Also explored are Western Europe's medieval manuscripts and the history of printing, leading to the innovations in technology and spelling rules of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Genres: History, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Writing, Reference, Ancient History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 4, 2004

Reviews

[Jeremy Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering the breadth of what this work intended to address, the scope of writing throughout human civilization, up to 2001, it's an incredibly packed and compact volume of useful information, especially for those who teach writing at any level. At a time, now, when the Oxford English Dictionary is adding anywhere from 600-1200 words to its lexicon every year, when text messaging is transforming shorthand, when cursive and handwriting are almost entirely irrelevant to an English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, this is a graduate-level book (read: dry and academic) that still manages to loosen the mind to an evolution in the way we've tried to communicate with each other over the past three to five thousand years. For while spelling, grammar, and proper punctuation are crucial elements of literacy instruction for the young, there's a wealth of reasons to be more flexible in our approach to such teaching, asking students to analyze their use of and dependence on words, to look back at how people have been forming and adapting their words for millennia.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good overview of how we all had a go at various writing systems. We're going to a nightclass now, on Indo-European Languages and find it all quite fascinating. That Korean alphabet system looks brilliant.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Other than his theory that Meso-American writing is so close to Chinese writing that there could very well have been a link (!!!) this was a very dry exercise in describing one small innovation after another. I learned a lot, but it wasn't necessarily a pleasure.

[Sapphire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this was very well done, the layout worked really well and there were plenty of pictures to help me visualize what he was taking about, and to satisfy my curiosity of what the scripts look like. It felt pretty thorough, although maybe a little bit centered on the pipeline to English, but that makes sense as I'm sure there had to be some things limited so that the book wasn't a thousand pages long. Overall a great book on writing systems!

[Andy Todd · Rating 2 out of 5]

Useful reference book for a quick survey of the development of writing systems. In an attempt to be exhaustive, it becomes exhausting; do we really need to know about an invented Easter Island script that lasted a few years and never covered the spoken language? There are too many trips down these unnecessary byways.

[joaovilnei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bom do começo ao fim

[Yasin Çetin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok iyi bir kitap. Sümer ve Mısır'da yazının ortaya çıkmasından günümüze gelen yazı serüveni kapsamlı bir şekilde ortaya konulmaktadır.

[Philip Sussman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of the technology of writing, with plenty of interesting examples.

[Tolga KAYA · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is written from a Eurocentric perspective. Information about languages ​​other than Latin is quite poor. However, the first part of the book was very informative.

[Gerard Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I should have expected this to be narrower and more text-booky than Fischer's History of Language but it was a bit of a slog. The author is very good in the speculative passages (on potential problems stemming from diaglossia, for example) and when considering the world in which machines write to one another without our intervention, but this book required way too much close consideration of the appearance and disappearance of various letterforms and tended to leave the reader feeling slightly outside of time and space. It's strength - like the History of Language - is in the clarity of Roger's argument. He decides early on what he means by writing and sticks to it. If you want to know about the origins of Chinese and Korean writing, this is the place to go as those are well and clearly-told histories. At a certain point, Fischer turns to the subject to reading and the book catches fire...for about a page and a half. While I'm not calling this The Matrix:Reloaded of this trilogy yet, I am eager to move on to the History of Reading.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this surprisingly readable in spite of technical vocabulary and a lot of information. Since it aims to survey the entire history of writing across the whole world there was inevitably some repetition and shifting chronology, but seldom without cause and never to the extent where it became annoying or felt patronising.

I wasn't starting completely from scratch (apologies for the pun) but, unlike most popular science books I read, this had plenty which was new to me which made it a far more satisfying read. For example I was already aware of non-alphabetic ways of representing language, but it was fascinating to see how the different systems have evolved and been adapted.

I did spot a minor error, which shook my trust a little: Dhivehi (Maldivian) is not written using Sinhalese characters but has it's own script - Tana. Since this isn't my field, I couldn't say if there are others.

[Graham Cammock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've said it before but this is probably the best, and definitely the most important book I've ever read. It's as important as reading the bible itself. A history of writing is so paramount to understanding, that I'm surprised there are so few books on such a crucial subject. Before reading any book read a history of writing. It seems to me that a history of writing concerning or related to western civilisation, is a little more important and interesting than the history of writing in say East Asia and Mesoamerica, hence only the two chapters concerning these regions are, a little less interesting. However, this book is a complete history of writing worldwide, and so even these chapters are essential.

[Georges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Um belo livro sobre a história da escrita. Não se trata da histórias das línguas mas de como elas foram passadas para o papel, como as soluções encontradas por um povo foi usada por outro para representar sua própria língua. O livro mostra o surgimento dos diversos alfabetos e evolução de algumas letras que chegaram a nós desde os Sumérios, como o caso da letra M que era a representação da palavra água com suas ondas. Nesse livro vemos a história da humanidade contada em séculos e milênios e nos dá uma visão de tempo muito diferente, nos sentimos mais eternos e mais finitos ao mesmo tempo.

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great history of the alphabet and how writing technology moved around the world. Even had fairly current info on whether the Incas had writing.

[Kevin Albrecht · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the history of writing. At the perfect level for someone like me: interested in linguistics but not an expert.

[Pab · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Tryptich is the best series of introductory language textbooks I've ever devoured. Highly Highly recommended.