Customer Reviews

The Story of Writing: With over 350 Illustrations, 50 in Color

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This extensively illustrated book tells general, interested readers as much about the origins and nature of different types of writing as most will want to know. The short, concise chapters, typically two pages long, range over subjects as diverse as Sumerian cuneiform and modern standardized signs for travelers. The author devotes particular attention to Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters, though he provides less adequate coverage of writing systems used on the Indian subcontinent. Throughout, he emphasizes the distinction between writing systems based on sounds (alphabets) and those using symbols to represent things or concepts. He makes the intriguing point that some written languages have mixed the two together.