Writing is the act of creating a persistent, usually visual representation of language on a surface.[1][2] As a structured system of com1munication, writing is also known as written language. Historically, written languages have emerged as a way to record corresponding spoken languages. A particular set of symbols, called a script, as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language, is known as a writing system. In some rare cases, writing may be tactile rather than visual.
The cognitive and social activity of writing involves neuropsychological and physical processes whose physical output is also called writing (or a text): a series of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Reading is the activity of encountering a text and construing its symbols.[3][4] Literacy is the ability of reading and writing.
In general, writing systems do not constitute languages in and of themselves, but rather a durable means of representing language such that it can be understood by people at a later time.[5][6] While the use of language is universal across human societies, most spoken languages are not written.[7] Those with a writing system can complement and extend the capacities of spoken language, transmitting it across space (e.g. written correspondence) and storing it for future reading (e.g. libraries).[8] Writing can also change people's relationships with the knowledge they acquire, since it allows humans to externalize their thinking in forms that are easier to reflect on, process more slowly, elaborate on, reconsider, and revise.[9][10][11][12]skhlakjsh
Tools, materials, and motivations to write
Any instance of writing involves a complex interaction among available tools, intentions, cultural customs, cognitive routines, genres, tacit and explicit knowledge, and the constraints and limitations of the systems used.[13] Writing implements used to make physical inscriptions include fingers, styluses, ink brushes, pencils, pens, and many styles of lithography; writing surfaces on which inscriptions may be made include stone tablets, clay tablets, bamboo slips, papyrus, wax tablets, vellum, parchment, paper, copperplate, and slate.[14]
The typewriter, as well as the digital word processor, allow individual writers to produce visually consistent text mechanically via a keyboard.[15]
Early advancements in natural language processing and natural language generation resulted in software capable of producing certain forms of highly formulaic writing (e.g. weather forecasts, brief summaries of sporting events, and financial-market overviews) without the direct involvement of humans[16] after initial configuration. Later developments found broader applications in writing support, such as generating initial drafts, producing feedback with the help of a rubric, copy-editing, and helping translation.[17] Most recently, software such as generative pre-trained transformers can, when provided with a prompt, generate longer and plausibly register-appropriate texts without additional human input.[18]
Motivations and purposes
Bronze tympanum featuring the personification of Writing – Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.
Historically, writing emerged to address the needs of societies growing in economic and social complexity. Once developed, potential applications included tracking produce and other wealth, recording history, maintaining culture, codifying knowledge through curricula as well as lists of texts deemed to contain foundational knowledge (e.g. The Canon of Medicine) or artistic value (e.g. the literary canon). Aids to administration included legal codes, census records, contracts, deeds of ownership, taxation, trade agreements, and treaties. As Charles Bazerman explains, the "marking of signs on stones, clay, paper, and now digital memories—each more portable and rapidly traveling than the previous—provided means for increasingly coordinated and extended action as well as memory across larger groups of people over time and space."[19] Further innovations included more uniform, predictable, and widely dispersed legal systems, the distribution of accessible versions of sacred texts, and furthering practices of scientific inquiry and knowledge management, all of which were largely reliant on portable and easily reproducible forms of inscribed language. The history of writing is co-extensive with uses of writing and the elaboration of activity systems that give rise to and circulate writing.[20]
Individual motivations for writing include the ability to operate beyond the limitations of one's own memory[21] (e.g. to-do lists, recipes, reminders, logbooks, maps, directions for complicated tasks or rituals), dissemination of ideas and coordination (e.g. essays, monographs, broadsides, plans, petitions, manifestos), creativity and storytelling, maintaining kinship and other social networks,[22] business correspondence regarding goods and services, and life writing (e.g. a diary or journal).[23]
The global spread of digital communication systems such as email and social media has made writing an increasingly important feature of daily life, where these systems mix with older technologies like paper, pencils, whiteboards, printers, and copiers.[24] Substantial amounts of everyday writing characterize most workplaces in developed countries.[25] In many occupations (e.g. law, accounting, software design, human resources), written documentation is not only the main deliverable but also the mode of work itself.[26] Even in occupations not typically associated with writing, routine records management has most employees writing at least some of the time.[27]