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23 Ways to Destroy Your Freelance Writing Career Before You Begin
Posted in Blog on August 29th, 2012 by Carol Tice – 38 Comments
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By Uttoran Sen
The U.S. Small Business Administration says that half of all new
businesses fail in the first five years.
Freelance businesses can fall apart even faster without careful
planning, because there are no bank loans or investors to back you up –
it’s just you and your business.
Are you going to make your business a true success? Or kill it before
it gets off the ground?
To be successful, you’ll be off to a good start if you can skip these
business-killing moves.
1. Sell yourself short
There are plenty of easy writing jobs that pay pennies. If you’re
content with making half of minimum wage, there’s no reason for you not
to snatch up as many of these cheap writing jobs as you can find.
2. Forgo the business plan
If you were going to start a big business with millions of dollars from
investors, you’d have a plan. But don’t bother having one – it’s only
all of your own hard-earned money at stake.
3. Pander to clients
You’re a freelancer – that’s just another glorified term for cubicle
jockey, right? Suck up to the clients – once they know you have no
confidence, they’ll pay you squat.
4. Put your eggs in one basket
If you’re looking for almost immediate failure, go ahead and put all of
your proverbial eggs in one basket. Then, when the client disappears
without bothering to pay, you’ll be dead in the water.
5. Stop selling yourself
Once you have the first clients, why bother getting more? These first
few will surely pay your bills forever. Besides, good marketing never
really pays off.
6. Make a nasty name for yourself
Hey – you’re a freelancer, now. You’re wearing your big kid pants and
the whole world should bow down and respect you. So treat everyone else
like jerks.
7. Beg, borrow and steal
Only don’t bother with the borrowing. Just beg other writers for help
all of the time until you drive them nuts.
Then steal concepts, articles, and ideas from their websites. That’ll
really build your network.
8. Blow your deadlines
Big party tonight? Maybe Pinterest called to you for four hours
straight?
Forget those deadlines and projects – just take the money and run.
Surely the client saw that coming.
9. Ignore your real earning potential
It’s much easier to find bad-paying gigs that take advantage of good
writers. So don’t bother exerting yourself – just take the cheap gigs
and then complain endlessly about how nobody pays you enough.
10. Let others be the boss
Not sure how much to charge a client? Just take whatever the client
offers.
Isn’t that easier than making your own decisions?
11. Write like a child
So you wrote a paper in the third grade that won a big smiley sticker?
Great!
Clients pay a lot of money for people who keep writing just like that.
Spell-check be damned.
12. Be ignorant
Nothing is more career-killing than pure ignorance. Maybe you should
slander others online. Or perhaps call potential clients racist names.
They’ll think it was a funny joke, too.
13. Ignore sick days
You never get sick, right? The kids will always be healthy, too.
Schedule work for every free moment – you’ll never need a sick day.
14. Give the IRS nothing
Hey — this is your hard-earned money. You don’t own the government a
dime! (Just tell the IRS that when they ask.)
15. Run a scam
Suck them in, spit them out. Who needs repeat business anyhow?
16. Pretend to be an expert
“Fake it ‘til you make it” is sound advice for those looking to sound
professional. Pretend you’re a retired surgeon looking for extra income
in the medical writing field, for instance.
17. Spread yourself thin
It’s important to be everyone at once if you’re really trying to fail
quickly. Be sure to stay up 24 hours a day, wear yourself to the bone
and not do anything very well.
18. Never learn anything new
Knowledge? We don’t need no stinkin’ knowledge. Obviously your way is
the best way – others just need to wise up.
19. Get defensive
So your client dared ask for revisions on your written perfection? Why
don’t you tell him to stick those revision requests where the sun don’t
shine?
20. Start a corrupt business
Who doesn’t love a good content mill? They pay you $5. You pay him $1.
He eats caterpillars for a living and writes in crayon. Great plan!
21. Pick fights
Online fights are fun. Come out swinging on everything – especially
issues you know very little about.
22. Complain to clients
Clients are like friends – you can tell them anything. They like to
listen to you complain about your terrible life, your drug addiction,
and your hate of people who undermine your pricing. That’ll keep them
coming back for more.
23. Make excuses
Things not going your way? Why not crawl in bed with a box of tissues
and a barrel full of excuses.
All sarcasm aside, freelance writing is an outstanding career if you’re
willing to invest time, energy and resources in building the sort of
career that you can be proud of.
It takes time, patience and diligence, but with careful handling you’ll
avoid the pitfalls of freelance work and enjoy a thriving new business.
What freelance pitfalls have you fallen into? Leave a comment and add
to this list.
Uttoran Sen has been a freelance writer since 2004. He likes to travel
around the world and write about it on his travel blog. Connect with
him on Twitter.
5 Writing Rules I Broke to Get Unstuck
Posted in Blog on July 18th, 2012 by Carol Tice – 45 Comments
by Jessica Lunk
When you’re at the beginning of your career as a writer, sometimes an
unlikely opportunity can help you gain the chops you need for bigger
and better assignments down the road.
If you’re stuck in a rut and unsure about where to find your first few
clients, it’s okay to break a few rules.
Here are five rules I ignored to build my freelance writing business:
1. Rule: Never write for the content mills.
They say: “Getting paid $5.00 an article is unacceptable, and lowers
the standard for writers everywhere.”
The content mill was my internship. It was not lucrative, but it did
provide me with experience in meeting deadlines as well as meeting the
needs of a client. It also introduced me to a wildly important acronym:
SEO.
2. Rule: Ask permission.
They say: “If you aren’t welcome, don’t go there.”
In 2009, I fell in love with Etsy. But with debates brewing about
whether or not digital material could be sold on Etsy, it was unclear
if I could market my writing as “handmade” and set up shop.
So I did it anyway. I sold product descriptions and blog posts, in turn
landing several amazing clients. These were my first real,
non-content-mill writing assignments, and they helped to build both my
portfolio and my confidence as a writer.
3. Rule: Steer clear of Craigslist.
They say: “A gig on Craigslist is low-hanging fruit.”
Good clients will post anywhere to find a great writer. I answered a
Craigslist ad looking for a content writer for a new website. The
description was nice and Craigslist-y, lacking any details to prove the
legitimacy of the business or the request.
I took a chance anyway, and it turned out to be a great opportunity. A
retired business owner was starting a new recruiting firm and needed a
writer with web savvy. He has been a wonderful client, and my
experience with his business and the recruiting industry helped me land
my current job.
4. Rule: Have a specialty or niche.
They say: “To be highly sought after, you need to have expertise in a
specific subject.”
Unfortunately, you can’t become an expert in a day. And while I
recognize the value of an expert opinion, I would have gotten nowhere
had I waited to develop one.
Every industry is hungry for a fresh perspective. The more you explore,
the more unique your viewpoint, and the better equipped you become to
make connections between any subject and the rest of the world.
5. Rule: Don’t copy.
They say: “Be original.”
The best formulas always work, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel
to write a great piece. One of my most viral blog posts to date, 5
Habits of Highly Successful Recruiters, follows the tried and true list
post structure. It is not an earth-shattering post, but it does its
job, compelling people to click and share.
Pursuing a writing career can be tough, so go easy on yourself and
avoid turning a ‘rule’ into an excuse not to take action. When in
doubt, proceed with enthusiasm.
What rules have you broken to find clients? Leave a comment and share
your story.
Jessica Lunk is a copywriter and content marketer at Sendouts. She
blogs weekly about the recruiting industry on the Sendouts blog. Follow
her on Twitter @jessicalunk.
Celebrate Freedom With My Ultimate Freelance Writers’ Answer Post
Posted in Blog on July 4th, 2012 by Carol Tice – 7 Comments
For those writers who aren’t U.S.-based, let me clue you in: today is a
big holiday over here.
But I didn’t want to leave you without answers to your freelance
writing questions.
So here is a compendium of all the mailbag-answer posts I’ve done in
the 4-year history of this blog.
There’s a wide range of topics covered here and more than 30 questions
answered — ought to have something liberating for everyone.
Happy 4th and enjoy!
Who in the Hell Should I Contact to Get a Copywriting Gig?
7 Ways a Freelance Writer can Create Retirement Income
Answers to 10 of Your Most Urgent Freelance Writing Questions
Here’s Where the Big-Money Online Writing Gigs are Hiding
How to Predict Freelance Writer Pay
How Freelance Writers Can Build Editor Relationships
Can You Help This Writer Find the Courage to Start?
What Writers Can Do When Editors Steal Their Ideas
How to Get Noticed on Twitter — 15 Tips for Writers
Mailbag: How Much Can Freelance Writers Charge for Blogging?
Help! I Bungled a Writing-Client Meeting — Mailbag
How a Writer Can Move Up From Content Mills — Mailbag
Should I Send Queries During the Holidays? — A Timely Mailbag Question
Mailbag: Could I Monetize My Blog?
Mailbag: How Can a Writer Find Publications?
How to Earn Well as a Freelance Writer–When English is Your Second
Language
Staff Writing Job vs Freelance Writing — Which is Best?
How to Find the Best Writing Opportunities
Blogging for Business, Part I: Finding Clients And Setting Pay Rates
Blogging For Business Part II: How It’s Done
Tips for Avoiding Loser Writing Clients
How to Get Paid More for SEO Writing
Why Your Blog Needs a Niche
Mailbag: How to Successfully Blog
Got more questions about freelance writing? I’ve got a 4-week bootcamp
coming next week, The Step by Step Guide to Freelance Writing Success,
that takes you step-by-step through how to break in, get first clips,
and start earning. It comes with a month of support in Freelance
Writers Den, too.
How to Dig Out of the Content Mill Hole and Land a Client — Fast
Posted in Blog on June 15th, 2012 by Carol Tice – 40 Comments
Man escapes from paper hole By Elaine Yue
“You’re an idiot.”
That’s what I told myself after I spent three hours writing a 500-word
article for a content mill.
What did it pay?
A whopping $5.
When I had decided I would do some freelance writing to “make some
extra cash,” I had no idea that writing a 500-word article would take
hours.
There was no way I would make money like this.
I start to dig
By luck, I came across the Make a Living Writing blog. My entire
perception changed.
I could actually make money writing!
I joined the Freelance Writer’s Den and read everything. I was sure
these tips would bring me a high-paying gig immediately.
Information overload
But I quickly realized I had a problem.
I had no idea where to begin.
All of these tips were great, but they were coming from veteran writers
who already had a marketing plan in place. They already had prestigious
clips and connections. One tweet and the gigs would roll in.
I had no clips.
I had no connections.
How was a newbie writer supposed to start?
Mind-mapping a marketing plan
I decided to mind-map a specific plan:
1. I answered:
* Who am I serving?
* What do they want?
* What fears keep them up at night?
* What problems can I solve for them?
* Where can I find them?
My mind map helped me organize my thoughts so I had a cohesive plan.
Otherwise, I was left thinking, “I’ll try this technique” or “I should
try that technique.” This process gave me a more concrete road map to
follow.
2. I built a prospect list using Manta, Linkedin, Jigsaw, and Google.
Using Manta’s data, I identified health supplement companies with $1
million-$5 million in annual revenue — my target audience.
3. I created a website with a blog to use as samples.
4. Using tips from the Den and Ed Gandia’s Warm Email Prospecting
class (yes, I did find it through this blog, and that is Carol’s
affiliate link), and working with the answers to my questions about
customers’ needs (getting more customers, educating shoppers about
health concerns), I created this email:
Subject:
Congrats on becoming an Authorized Distributor of [Vendor] → trigger
event
Message:
I read a press release that [Company] has become an Authorized
Distributor of [Vendor] – congrats! → trigger event
I’m contacting you because I help nutritional supplement companies
write newsletters, blogs, and marketing material that help convey
their messages clearly and effectively to customers. And I have some
ideas on how you can convey your message to your very specific and
special target audience. → value statement
Let me know if you’re interested in discussing further. No sales
pitch — just seeing if we might have a good fit. → call to action
Finally, a client!
When a client called me, I realized how great timing and an effective
pitch were instrumental in landing me the gig.
He had been thinking about creating better content for his customers
and increasing his Google ranking.
So when I said that I was a health writer who could write effective
content, it was a no-brainer.
The gig: four blog posts and two landing pages for $1,000. Every month.
Tweaking my plan
I am by no means on easy street — yet. My marketing plan is still a
work in progress. But for us newbies, any plan is better than no plan.
So take all of the tips from the Den and other sources, create a plan,
and I guarantee you will get your first client.
Elaine Yue is a freelance writer and consultant specializing in the
health supplement and insurance industries. For more details about her
marketing plan, check out ElaineYue.com.
Do you have questions about how to earn more from your writing? Learn
more in my community Freelance Writers Den – take ecourses, attend live
events, ask writing pros your questions in our forums, and use our
exclusive Junk-Free Job Board.
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Is Food Writing Important?
Posted: 09/24/2012 9:08 am
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and not least of all
because I've always strived to distance myself from the pigeonhole
called "food writer." Food is important, obviously. If we don't have
it, we die. Writing about something so important should need no
justification. And yet if I were called, say, an "environmental
journalist," wouldn't that sound somehow more substantial, more serious
than being a "food writer"? Isn't exploring the effect of increasing
levels of carbon dioxide on our environment or the ecological impact of
harnessing wind energy to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels more
important than writing about, say, Salmon Tartare in a Savory Tuile
with Red Onion and Crème Fraîche? A journalist embedded with American
troops in Afghanistan versus a writer who waxes poetic on the glories
of veal stock?
There are, of course, diverse and good reasons to write about food,
from aesthetic pleasures to consumer advocacy. Many books in which food
is the central subject have had an extraordinary impact on the way we
think about food, and our lives--Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma
and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, of course, but also books by
writers such as Paul Greenberg, Tracie McMillan, Mark Kurlansky, Barry
Estabrook, Rowan Jacobsen (there are now too many to cite) that explore
how our world is changed by the way we grow, distribute, buy, and cook
food.
Food writer Monica Bhide posed this question--does food writing
matter?--on her blog, and I was heartened to see many smart responses
from writers. Chief among the commenters was journalist and author
Annia Ciezadlo, author of Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War
(in which she writes, "I cook to comprehend a place I've landed in").
In response to Bhide's question, Cizadlo simply quoted George Orwell,
from The Road to Wigan Pier, a book about class structure in 1930s
England:
"I think it could plausibly be argued that changes of diet are more
important than changes of dynasty or even of religion. The Great War,
for instance, could never have happened if tinned food had not been
invented. And the history of the past four hundred years in England
would have been immensely different if it had not been for the
introduction of root-crops and various other vegetables at the end of
the middle ages, and a little later the introduction of non-alcoholic
drinks (tea, coffee, cocoa) and also of distilled liquors to which the
beer-drinking English were not accustomed. Yet it is curious how seldom
the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to
politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or
market-gardeners."
I'm delighted to have these words disinterred from a 75-year-old book,
because it states what should be obvious. Food is all-important. To
write about what is all-important should need no justification.
And yet it still seems to.
Because food is all around us, everywhere, easy and cheap, we've taken
it for granted. Do you ever stop to wonder how it is that you can buy
pea pods 365 days a year, whether you live in Maine, Montana, or
Manitoba? Few do. The fact is, most people don't think about food until
they don't have any. Then it's pretty much all they can think about.
And we don't think about food obsessively until it starts making us
sick, which is what has happened in this country. Our food is making us
sick in myriad ways. Our toddlers develop allergies unheard of when we
were growing up. Children develop a type of diabetes once seen only in
late adulthood. Obesity is rampant. And because of this we've become so
hyperconscious of what we eat that we believe all kinds of nonsense.
Dieticians once preached that eggs were bad for you--eggs! People far
and wide still believe that fat is what makes you fat and that cutting
salt and fat from one's diet will make a healthy person even healthier.
The way we produce food is destroying the land, polluting rivers and
oceans, debasing the animals we raise for food and the workers who
slaughter and process them. Nothing good comes from shitting where you
eat, and this is what America has been doing for half a century.
People ask me the reason for today's intense interest in food and chefs
and cooking. A serious book with a jokey title was written to explore
just this, David Kamp's superb United States of Arugula. But I don't
think you need a whole book that includes Eisenhower's highway system,
war veterans returning from Europe, the increasing accessibility of
international travel, and the impact of television to explain it. For
me, it all comes down to the fact that we lost something vital when we
stopped cooking our own food in the 1950s. And not cooking our own food
has increasingly made us sick, to the point that we've become obsessive
about food.
Obsession over food has had some positive results, such as the call to
eat local, sustainable, and humanely raised food. But obsession often
leads to really bad ideas, like 100% raw diets and any number of loopy
food imperatives otherwise intelligent people (see Steve Jobs) put
themselves on. I'd love to see a study of life-long raw-dieters and
life-long vegans and the effects on their reproductive systems. I'd
wager they'd quickly self-select themselves out of the population
(which is why, perhaps, we don't see many people who are life-long
vegans and raw-foodists).
I believe it's foolish to deny that we are human, which we do when we
embrace nonhuman behavior.
Almost everything our bodies and minds are capable of is represented in
some part of the animal kingdom; primates even demonstrate theory of
mind, and one species has nonreproductive sex, once thought to be an
exclusively human activity. There are only two activities that set us
apart, and we should take heed. First, humans are the only animals that
cook their food. If we do not cook our food, or stay close to people
who do, life is unsustainable; there have been no groups documented to
have survived for long on an exclusively raw diet (convincingly
documented in Richard Wrangham's book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made
Us Human).
Second, humans are the only animals that generate narrative--that is,
tell stories. Telling and hearing stories is, in fact, one of our
primary, life-long activities, something we do all day and throughout
the night. Sleep scientists have shown that if we are prevented from
telling ourselves stories when we sleep, if our brains are prevented
from dreaming, life is unsustainable. Cooking and telling stories.
That's what makes us human.
So telling stories about food and cooking is not only natural, it's
necessary for our survival. It's important to understand how something
that is essential to our humanity and our well-being affects all other
aspects of our lives and our humanity. No one questions the need to
explore string theory and economic policy, or asks for justification
for art and literature. But people do question the seriousness of
writing about food. I can go weeks without quantum physics or a good
movie. Can't say that about food. I dream of a day when we no longer
need to be obsessed with food, because that would mean that we had
figured it out, we had all come to a common understanding of how to
grow our food, distribute it, and consume it in ways that don't make us
sick and crazy, but rather healthy and happy; that, rather than being
guilty, fearful, and intimidated by food, we instead rejoiced in food;
that we would cook together, with our families and friends, and then
sit down to share this cared-for food and tell each other the stories
of our day.
This I think I was meant to do. To connect food with what I believe is
fundamental to our lives and our happiness, to our humanity, and to do
so through story. I will continue to write about many things, but I
will never stop writing about food and cooking, what food and cooking
means, to make it clear that cooking dinner is not a chore or a hassle,
not simply the fulfillment of a bodily need, or even an indulgence, but
is in fact fundamental to our humanity and to the health of our
children and our children's children.
It's all-important.
Michael Ruhlman is the author of the new Kindle Single, The Main Dish,
a food writer's memoir, and Salumi: The Craft of Italian Dry-Curing
Follow Michael Ruhlman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ruhlman
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Yvonne Maffei
53 Fans
02:55 PM on 10/10/2012
Michael, this is such a well-written and timely piece, thank you. I
will be sharing.
Yvonne_Maffei: Michael, this is such a well-written and timely piece,
thank
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Paul Hughes
Allergic to Bureaucracy
227 Fans
06:36 PM on 10/07/2012
Gr8 piece, Michael!
Beef Recall and the Grim Reality of our Food System
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/paul-hughes/alberta-beef-recall-dangerous-
lack-of-oversight_b_1934133.html
hp_blogger_Paul Hughes: Gr8 piece, Michael! Beef Recall and the Grim
Reality of
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/hp_blogger_Paul
Hughes/is-food-writing-important_b_1903689_194064157.html
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Ann Weiss-Lagravenese
23 Fans
02:49 AM on 09/29/2012
Thanks Michael for once again, bringing home the bacon. Just finished
making a cookbook for a friend's baby shower, asking each guest to send
me a favorite recipe with their baby picture. I was not surprised to
see many of them to be recipes handed down from their own Moms and it
made me so happy to see that the artistry that came out of the
old-fashioned kitchens and how they still produce a good portion of the
meals we still love to cook at home today.
Ann_Weiss-Lagravenese: Thanks Michael for once again, bringing home the
bacon. Just
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Bernadette Dryden
0 Fans
12:23 PM on 09/27/2012
Thanks for putting a fine and well-explained point on an important
subject—that writing and reading about food is critical to
understanding the fabric of local, national and international culture
and life. Nothing has taught me more about people—strangers, as well as
close friends—than how they interact with food. I thank my
long-deceased mother every day of my life for having given me my most
important life gift—teaching me to cook with love for those I love.
Nothing says "I care for you" throughout the world more than food
cooked with care and love.
—Bernadette Dryden, Co-leader, Slow Food Katy Trail
Bernadette_Dryden: Thanks for putting a fine and well-explained point
on an
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Bernadette_Dryden/is-food-writing-
important_b_1903689_191238539.html
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Gluten Free Foodies
Living Gluten Free, loving Farmers Mkts
283 Fans
11:58 AM on 09/27/2012
Bravo!
Gluten_Free_Foodies: Bravo!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Gluten_Free_Foodies/is-food-writin
g-important_b_1903689_191230569.html
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KaristasKitchen
71 Fans
07:10 PM on 09/26/2012
Brilliant Michael! "Food Should not only satisfy our hunger, it should
feed our soul, nourish our body while delighting our senses" ~Karista
Bennett
KaristasKitchen: Brilliant Michael! "Food Should not only satisfy our
hunger, it
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MarcheDimanche
239 Fans
01:05 AM on 09/26/2012
My grandmother's recipe cards are sitting before me on my desk. They
are brown now, and need rewriting and preserving in a digital
environment. I can still smell her shampoo. I can still taste her stew.
And so we pass memories, culture, love, and encouragement forward from
generation to generation. Through recipes. Through stories about meals
eaten. Through stories about meals cooked together.
MarcheDimanche: My grandmother's recipe cards are sitting before me on
my
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/MarcheDimanche/is-food-writing-imp
ortant_b_1903689_190822915.html
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miguelbron68
0 Fans
10:54 PM on 09/25/2012
There is always a first and last question in most mexican towns when
visiting relatives... have you already eaten? do you want to take
something home? being food or special dish the reason of the visit this
is a ritual never forgotten should be rude not to be offered... I am
still having a conversation with a spicy beef stew made of guajes and
tomatillos finished with perejil served black broken beans and mexican
rice with hand made tortillas in the middle of the day. priceless
experiences that nourish you palate and calm your quest of being human,
while enjoy a basic human feeling of being loved and having a
understanding without thinking.
miguelbron68: There is always a first and last question in most
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/miguelbron68/is-food-writing-impor
tant_b_1903689_190801466.html
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George Ujvary
11 Fans
07:53 PM on 09/25/2012
As always, another great piece Michael. Sadly, the majority of food
writing that is 'important' is the least popular and we are deluged by
the satisfaction of demand for the sort or writing that is not
'important'. To rub further salt into the wounds, those guilty of the
majority of the 'unimportant' stuff are those whose only stake in the
food industry is their own popularity.
George_Ujvary: As always, another great piece Michael. Sadly, the
majority of
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blackbirdbakes
293 Fans
09:54 AM on 09/25/2012
Some say there are those that can write, those that can write well, and
those that can write well about food. I don't believe this observation
is mutually exclusive because Mr. Ruhlman proved that you can be each
of these writers rolled into one. A roulade writer. The current state
of eating in America is nothing short of shocking and having lived
gluten-free for the last decade, I have witnessed the exponential
decline in the quality of eating and living. I fight for this notion,
this "quality of life." What does this really mean today? Sure the
quality of food writing is important, but the crux of the article
hinges on the idea that home cookery is a dying craft; an art we are
frantically grappling for as it runs through our dysfunctional fingers.
I applaud Mr. Ruhlman for his call to arms to do what we are
genetically coded to do---to eat from the land and to connect the act
of eating with memory, because we are forgetting. We are forgetting who
we are, where we came from, and what makes us happy to be human,
because and as we continue to forget, we carry ourselves further down
the road of a lost culture.
blackbirdbakes: Some say there are those that can write, those that
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/blackbirdbakes/is-food-writing-imp
ortant_b_1903689_190564343.html
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mjkblog
7 Fans
08:20 AM on 09/25/2012
I'm so glad I read this. Thank you.
mjkblog: I'm so glad I read this. Thank you.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/mjkblog/is-food-writing-important_
b_1903689_190544763.html
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Nina Ricciardi Quirk
9 Fans
07:52 AM on 09/25/2012
Well said.
It stems from people's disconnect with what food actually is to them:
the basic element of our life force. Arguably these people are so
mentally sickened by eating the wrong foods in the first place that it
does not allow their mind space to openly think about it. Those are the
people who are rejecting it.
Nina_Ricciardi_Quirk: Well said. It stems from people's disconnect with
what food
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Nina_Ricciardi_Quirk/is-food-writi
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local milk
13 Fans
10:56 PM on 09/24/2012
This. Yes. This was awesome. As long as man has been writing, he has
been writing about food. Virginia Woolf wrote of food. Henry Miller
wrote of the bits of egg in Boris' goetee and hunger. Cooking is the
art of living, rather literally. Bukowski wrote about sandwiches.
William Carlos Williams of plums. I can smell fried eggs when I read
Calvino. Food writing is writing, and writing is art. And art needs no
justification. Anyone who says otherwise is a philistine. Creation is
the highest human function, historically divine. Story telling, the
mediation of the raw data of experience through language, needn't be
justified by mundane utility. Art & food are life blood. And thank god
too, what fantastic things to thrive on.
local_milk: This. Yes. This was awesome. As long as man has
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/local_milk/is-food-writing-importa
nt_b_1903689_190485695.html
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sabelmouse
i love to tumble , ask me why .
753 Fans
06:01 AM on 09/25/2012
women cook and men write and who does the washing up?
sabelmouse: women cook and men write and who does the washing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/sabelmouse/is-food-writing-importa
nt_b_1903689_190530149.html
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local milk
13 Fans
04:56 PM on 09/25/2012
Non-sequitur...
local_milk: Non-sequitur...
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nt_b_1903689_190707295.html
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
SalesmanForLife
Feed your intellectual appetite!
613 Fans
10:20 PM on 09/24/2012
Food writing has value but it can be shallow as well. The books by
Michael Pollen I have found wonderful value in. I have read some pretty
shotty food stories and recipe books but there are always good and bad
in almost every expression. Be selective and dont immediatly buy an
idea or approach. The best food book I have ever read was Feast For All
Seasons by Roy Andries De Groot. Of the many books I have read, this
one took my breath away and I still relish it and have since it was
published in 1976. With so much celebrity out there regarding food,
food trends and cooking....this one knocks them all out, for good.
SalesmanForLife: Food writing has value but it can be shallow as
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JudithMara
0 Fans
07:54 PM on 09/24/2012
This is such an important article and so articulate. Bravo, Michael. I
am going to get in touch with you to write for our new magazine:
http://whoshungrymagazine.com/. You embody everything we stand for.
JudithMara: This is such an important article and so articulate. Bravo,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/JudithMara/is-food-writing-importa
nt_b_1903689_190443215.html
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Bridal Shower and Wedding Shower Invitations: Wording, Poems and Sayings
November 26, 2012
Bridal Shower and Wedding Shower Invitations: Wording, Poems and
Sayings
What is a Bridal Shower? A bridal shower or wedding shower is a party
for the closest female friends and family members of the bride-to-be .
It is also known as a bachelorette party or a lingerie shower of the
soon-to-be bride with her loved ones. The custom of bridal showers
began in 1890’s...
How to Write an Objective?
November 24, 2012
How to Write an Objective?
What is an Objective and What Exactly is the Art of Writing an
Objective? An objective in literary terms can be understood as a goal,
ambition, or designated outcome. By writing down an objective we mean
to put down on paper the desired mark or marks towards which one is
heading. Objective, like writing...
How to Write a Gantt Chart for Project Management?
September 3, 2012
How to Write a Gantt Chart for Project Management?
What is a Gantt Chart? It is basically a chart made of illustrative
bars. The chart is given the name ‘Gantt’ from its creator Henry Gantt
who designed this useful chart in the years ranging between 1910 and
1915. The chart is used to give a complete schedule for a project. It
comprises of...
What to Write on a Graduation Thank You Note?
July 10, 2012
What to Write on a Graduation Thank You Note?
A Graduate, Finally! It is time to receive congratulation notes and
gifts from loved ones when you pass your high school or receive
graduate degree at college. So many friends and closest members of your
family come to you with lovely gifts. They are also enthusiastic
attending your graduate ceremony and parties afterward at...
What Should I Write in an Engagement Invitation?
July 10, 2012
What Should I Write in an Engagement Invitation?
Planning your Engagement Invites Writing an invitation for an
engagement is very simple and just requires little consideration. Cute
invitation cards are easily accessible from market. However, you need
to add personalized congrats messages in your card as per your choice
and criteria. This article will highlight some cases regarding
engagement invitation, format of...
Baby Announcement Cards
June 12, 2012
Baby Announcement Cards
Purpose of New Born Baby Announcement Cards In USA and many other
European countries, it is a very general practice amongst parents to
proclaim the arrival of their new born baby. This is just to announce
the new guest to all family members and friends. Nowadays, this
proclamation celebration is becoming a custom day...
What to Write in a Wedding Gift Card?
June 7, 2012
What to Write in a Wedding Gift Card?
Essential Wordings to Consider While Drafting Wedding Gift Cards
Wedding is considered the most precious and the memorable time of life
filled with excitement and happiness. It is the beginning of a new
life. Some people are in view that writing wedding cards are the
easiest ones among all types of greeting cards. As...
How to Write an Astrological Chart?
May 23, 2012
How to Write an Astrological Chart?
What is an Astrological or Natal Chart? Definition and Meaning An
astrological chart represents a birth chart which reflects the location
of all the planets in accordance with the sun, moon and the time when a
person is born. OR An astrological chart is such that each zodiac star
is affiliated with each planet...
How to Write a Classification or Division Essay?
May 10, 2012
How to Write a Classification or Division Essay?
What is a Classification Essay? A classification or division essay can
be defined as, A classification or division essay is a very unlike
genre that deals with the classification of organizing the rational
connections within. When writing a classification or division essay,
the writer is supposed to classify or divide the arguments of the...
How to Write a Wedding Program?
April 12, 2012
How to Write a Wedding Program?
Preparing Thoughtful Wedding Programs The times we live in call for
organization and streamlining of all our activities, saving ourselves
as well as others valuable time. There are two types of events where
disorganization can mean major chaos, one being a company’s Annual
General Meeting and the other…your wedding! So how can we save...
How to Write Literary Analysis?
March 12, 2012
How to Write Literary Analysis?
What is a Literary Analysis? A literary criticism or analysis is used
to demonstrate a sense of new understanding about the already existed
text. The goal of literary analysis writing is to offer logical and
rational evidences in your research. For example if you are writing any
text about literature then you use different...
How to Write a Personal Introduction?
December 9, 2011
How to Write a Personal Introduction?
h1>Writing a Personal Introduction Writing a personal introduction is a
tricky deal that should be well written because of two reasons. First,
your introduction creates an impression of your personality on the
readers. It reflects yourself and tells the audience what you really
are. Second, with the help a well-written personal introduction, you
can...
How To Write Calligraphy?
November 14, 2011
How To Write Calligraphy?
Calligraphy Origins of Calligraphy The world looks like a much better
place when you stand in environments with beautiful interiors,
well-articulated themes and especially, serene calligraphy. The word
"calligraphy" itself is derived from the Greek words meaning "beauty"
and "writing". Samples of calligraphy date as far back as 200 BC, and
this art form...
How to Write Wedding Vows?
November 11, 2011
How to Write Wedding Vows?
Wedding Vows Wedlock is a HUGE change for anyone planning to enter into
the sacred union; (almost in all majority cases) you will be spending
the rest of your life with one person. This same person will be the
individual you will have kids with, go home shopping, plan your
finances with, and most...
What to Write in a Bridal Shower Card?
November 8, 2011
What to Write in a Bridal Shower Card?
In general, a bridal shower is a daytime party where the bride receives
gifts that will facilitate her through her married life. A bridal
shower gives women a possibility to indulge their inner and imagine, if
only for an afternoon, that once married the bride-to-be will use her
slew of newly acquired kitchen accessories...
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#WOW! Women On Writing
Issue 54 - The Gatekeepers: Agents and Editors - Jessica Sinsheimer,
Lucia Macro, Stephany Evans
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Issue 54 - The Gatekeepers: Agents and Editors - Jessica Sinsheimer,
Lucia Macro, Stephany Evans
EDITOR'S DESK
1. THE GATEKEEPERS: AGENTS & EDITORS
As writers with the goal of publication, we are going to meet various
gatekeepers along our journey. And I just love that
word--gatekeepers--like we need a term to make agents and editors more
frightening than they already are! Yes, the gatekeepers are scary at
first because they seemingly hold so much power; but once they grant
you access, they become your allies and mentors. An editor can provide
you with a steady stream of income, and garnering a literary agent is
like having a fairy godmother for life! Who doesn't want that? MORE >>
ONLINE WORKSHOPS & WRITING CLASSES
WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING CLASSROOM
Whether you are looking to boost your income or work on your craft, we
know that education is an important part of a writer's career. That's
why WOW! handpicks qualified instructors and targeted classes that
women writers will benefit from. All of the courses operate online and
are taught one-on-one with the instructor. The flexibility of the
platform allows students to complete assignments on their own time and
work at their own pace in the comfort of their own home. Visit the
classroom page and check out our current line up of workshops: fiction
writing, writing for children, screenwriting, creativity, memoir,
personal essay, grammar, food writing, freelance writing, novel
writing, finding a literary agent, blogging, social networking for
authors, independent publishing, and more. MORE >>
FEATURES
2. FALL 2012 FLASH FICTION CONTEST WINNERS
Stay tuned for the results of the Fall 2012 Flash Fiction Contest with
guest judge literary agent Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane
Freymann Literary Agency. MORE >>
3. SO, WHAT DOES A LITERARY AGENT DO?
A writer's journey to publish a book can feel much like Dorothy's
journey to visit the Wizard of Oz. There's a definite road to follow,
but it's not always easy. The good news is that help is available in
the form of literary agents. Acquiring a literary agent is not easy,
but it's usually a must if you want your book published by a big
publishing house. Agents are there for writers and are the key to
gaining entrance into this elusive world. Kerrie Flanagan chats with
literary agents Jessica Regel and Elizabeth Evans--both with the Jean
V. Naggar Literary Agency--and Kristina Holmes, founder and president
of The Holmes Agency, who share not only what they do, but also
specific insight to their success. MORE >>
4. HOW TO WIN OVER LITERARY AGENTS: INTERVIEW WITH LITERARY AGENT
JESSICA SINSHEIMER OF THE SARAH JANE FREYMANN LITERARY AGENCY
During her summer book tour, C. Hope Clark met associate literary agent
Jessica Sinsheimer at two conferences, as she represented the Sarah
Jane Freymann Literary Agency. Her humorous and warm, yet introverted,
way of treating writers captured Hope's interest. So she asked this
sweet lady to provide WOW readers a taste of her insight, from material
she loves to represent to what turns her on in a query and client.
We're sure you'll enjoy meeting Jessica. MORE >>
5. IMPRESSING THE GATEKEEPERS: WHAT AGENTS AND EDITORS SEEK IN
SUBMISSIONS
If you've put a year into writing your book, you should put in a few
extra hours towards proofreading, crafting a strong query letter, and
researching your target agents and markets. Devon Ellington chats with
Jessica Faust, literary agent and owner of BookEnds, LLC; Heather
Osborn, editorial director of Samhain Publishing; and Stephany Evans,
literary agent and president of FinePrint Literary Management, who
share their best advice on submissions. Included is a helpful section
on cover letters! MORE >>
6. AVON IMPULSE: BRINGING E-ROMANCES INTO READERS' HEARTS--A CHAT
WITH EDITOR LUCIA MACRO
Lucia Macro is bringing sexy back to readers. As executive editor at
Avon/Morrow, Lucia oversees the HarperCollins romance imprint's
digital-first line, Avon Impulse. Now, she's on the prowl for edgy and
dreamy work for the romance format that publishes two new digital
originals each week. Lovers of romance novels can have Avon books
delivered to their favorite e-reading device with a simple click of a
button. And romance writers? Here's an imprint looking for your work,
and you don't need an agent. WOW columnist LuAnn Schindler interviews
Lucia about her journey in the publishing industry, the philosophy of
Avon Impulse, and changes in the romance genre and publishing worlds,
in general. MORE >>
7. THE NEW YORKER FOR MOTHERS: AN INTERVIEW WITH MARCELLE SOVIERO,
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BRAIN, CHILD MAGAZINE
Marcelle Soviero read and wanted to write for Brain, Child: The
Magazine for Thinking Mothers. When she found out the magazine was
closing its doors, she was devastated--but not for long. She decided to
do something about it and bought the magazine! WOW columnist and editor
Margo L. Dill asks her about this decision, what will stay the same and
what will change, and how to write for what Marcelle refers to as "The
New Yorker for mothers." Her story is truly inspirational, and while
you are feeling motivated and inspired, you might just get an essay or
story idea for Brain, Child. MORE >>
COLUMNS
8. PASSIONATE ABOUT BOOKS AND AUTHORS: 20 QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY LISA
LESHNE, OWNER OF THE LESHNE AGENCY
Lisa Leshne has been in the publishing business for over twenty years.
She currently has her own literary agency, The Leshne Agency, with
clients, such as Jill Smokler (Confessions of a Scary Mommy) and
Cynthia Brown (Brave Hearts: Extraordinary Stories of Pride, Pain, and
Courage). Before starting her own agency in 2011, she was a literary
agent for LJK Literary. Elizabeth King Humphrey chats with Lisa about
the type of books she's looking for, why it's important to have a
platform, what she means by narrative and prescriptive nonfiction, and
her biggest pet peeves in query letters. MORE >>
9. THE GATEKEEPERS: A GUIDE TO THE DECIDERS ON YOUR WRITING JOURNEY
Whether we desire a larger audience, ongoing (paid) writing work, or a
platform that's not digital, there will always be outlets for our
writing that have gatekeepers: the folks who decide what gets published
and/or who gets hired. Allena Tapia takes a look at some of the most
common gatekeepers you'll meet on your writing journey. For
simplicity's sake, she breaks these down into different sections for
freelance writers and authors. MORE >>
10. HOW TO SELL YOUR MANUSCRIPT WITHOUT AN AGENT
It's a common misconception that editors won't deal with authors
directly. Not only will they interact with you, but they'll buy your
book. Rachel Eddey knows this for sure because it happened to her. She
had three agents try to sell her humorous memoir, Running of the Bride,
with no luck for over two and a half years. As a last-ditch effort
before shelving the project, she decided to represent herself--and sold
it in fifteen days. Rachel shares how she did it, and interviews other
authors who share how they landed a publishing contract without an
agent as well. Featuring advice from Christine Clifford, author of the
bestselling Not Now . . . I'm Having a No Hair Day; Janice Booth,
author of Only Pack What You Can Carry; and Erin Lale, editor of
Eternal Press and Damnation Books. MORE >>
11. WRITER'S MARKETS: PUBLISHERS SEEKING CHILDREN'S AND YOUNG ADULT
MANUSCRIPTS
Once the rush of being a NaNoWriMo champion wears off, more often than
not, panic sets in about the revision process. To help you keep your
eye on the prize, Krissy Brady shares five publishing companies that
accept children's and young adult manuscripts. (Psst . . . they also
accept unagented submissions from first-time authors!) Learn how to
pitch to Dawn Publications, Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Flashlight Press,
Immedium, and Scarletta Press. Find out their writer's guidelines, what
to pitch, submission etiquette, editor's tips, and more! MORE >>
CLASSIFIEDS
Four Literary Contests from BlogNostics
Where do dreams begin? Some have to ask all their lives, others take
action! BlogNostics Literary Contest in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry,
and Prose runs January 1, 2013 - April 10, 2013. Enter to win over
$5,000 in cash and prizes. Stop dreaming and start writing. Show Us
You!
Submission guidelines: https://blognostics.submittable.com/submit
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Mention WOW! Women On Writing for 25% Off your first purchase by
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Find out more about Cara and her services by visiting her website:
www.edit-my-novel.com.
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If your goal to get paid to write and see your work published in print
or online, then the 2013 Writer's Market is the perfect resource for
you. Not only does it provide you with writing advice from industry
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agents, book publishers, editors of trade and consumer publications,
and writing contests!
Visit www.writersdigestshop.com
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___________ __________ GO
Issue 54 - The Gatekeepers: Agents and Editors - Jessica Sinsheimer,
Lucia Macro, Stephany Evans
So, What Does a Literary Agent Do? Elizabeth Evans, Kristina Holmes,
Jessica Regel
Jessica Sinsheimer
Impressing the Gatekeepers: Jessica Faust, Heather Osborn, Stephany
Evans
Marcelle Soviero
Avon Impulse: Seeking Romance Writers - Exectuive Editor Lucia Macro
20 Questions with Lisa Leshne
How to Sell Your Manuscript Without and Agent - Rachel Eddey, Christine
Clifford, Janice Booth, Erin Lale
A Guide to the Gatekeepers for Authors and Freelancers by Alena Tapia
Publishers Seeking Unagented Children's and YA Manuscripts
Facebook Best Practices for Profiles, Pages, Groups, and Posts for
Writers
The Two Sides of Social Media - How to Be Your Own Publicist
How to Promote with Pinterest
Create Multiple Streams of Income for Your Blog
Slam: Drive Traffic to Your Blog Today & How to Sell E-books On a Nich
Blog
Blogging in a Social Media Landscape - Samara O'Shea, Shira Lazar,
Josie Loza, Krista Canfield
Sowing and Reaping the Ten Benefits of Blogging
Online Markets - Websites that Pay
Summer 2012 Flash Fiction Contest Winners!
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Introduction
What you'll find here, from Durant Imboden: the writer, editor, and Web
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Literary agents
Do you really need an agent? Where do you find one? And once you've
picked an agent, how do you get the agent to say "yes"?
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how to write and sell
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___________________________ Search
50 Synonyms for “Villain”
The store of synonyms for villain is so well stocked that it seems,
well, villainous to employ that relatively colorless word in favor of
many worthy substitutes — especially in humorous contexts. Here’s a
roster of appropriate alternatives.
Mark Nichol on January 26, 2013 | 1 Comment | Continue Reading...
The Meanings and Connotations of “Junior” and “Senior”
Aside from their literal meanings, junior and senior have an array of
connotations related to hierarchy.
Mark Nichol on January 25, 2013 | 7 Comments | Continue Reading...
Plural But Singular in Construction
In the dictionary, when you’re looking up a noun that ends in s, you’re
apt to find a notation like this: “noun plural but singular in
construction.” What does that mean?
Mark Nichol on January 24, 2013 | 12 Comments | Continue Reading...
5 Examples of the Need for Multiple Hyphenation
Complex and compound phrasal adjectives, in which more than two words
unite to modify a noun that follows the phrase, pose a challenge for
many writers. How many hyphens are required, and where do they go?
These examples demonstrate the proper application of hyphens in such
cases.
Mark Nichol on January 23, 2013 | 8 Comments | Continue Reading...
Answers to Questions About Abbreviations
1. Which is the preferred abbreviation for “United States,” US or U.S.?
Both forms are correct, but, in the interests of consistency with the
decline of the use of periods in abbreviations, the trend is to use US.
Mark Nichol on January 22, 2013 | 20 Comments | Continue Reading...
The Basics of Back-Formation
A back-formation is a new word produced by excising an affix, such as
producing the verb secrete from the noun secretion. Many
back-formations, like that one, acquire respectability, but others,
especially more recent coinages, are considered nonstandard, so use
them with caution.
Mark Nichol on January 21, 2013 | 14 Comments | Continue Reading...
20 Names of Body Parts and Elements and Their Figurative Meanings
In past weeks, I’ve compiled lists of figurative meanings of the names
of sense organs, parts of the head, and parts of the hand. Here’s a
roster in which I’ve accumulated such references for other parts and
elements of the body.
Mark Nichol on January 19, 2013 | 11 Comments | Continue Reading...
Compound Words in Technological Contexts
“Cell phone,” or cellphone? “Home page,” or homepage? “Touch screen,”
or touchscreen? Should such compounds be open, or closed? We see them
both ways, so it’s difficult to know how to treat them — unless you use
one simple test: Choose the form based on the context.
Mark Nichol on January 18, 2013 | 15 Comments | Continue Reading...
How to Test for Hyphenation in Phrasal Adjectives
One of the most frequent style errors among writers is the omission of
one or more hyphens in a phrasal adjective, a phrase consisting of two
or more words linked to show that they’re teaming up to modify a noun
that follows them. There’s an easy test to help you see that the hyphen
is necessary.
Mark Nichol on January 17, 2013 | 6 Comments | Continue Reading...
What Is a Sentence?
Multiple definitions exist for sentence, and various sources differ in
their interpretation of what constitutes a valid sentence and which
forms are incorrect. Here’s a brief survey of what a sentence is.
Mark Nichol on January 16, 2013 | No Comments Yet | Continue Reading...
5 Examples of Misplaced Modifiers
You’ve heard that timing is everything. In writing, however, placement
takes first place when it comes to conveying meaning. Consider these
examples.
Mark Nichol on January 15, 2013 | 9 Comments | Continue Reading...
Fragmentary Sentences and Sentence Fragments
Writers should distinguish between fragmentary sentences and sentence
fragments. The following sentences are fragmentary: “A virtuoso
performance? Some virtuoso.” Despite the absence of a subject and a
verb, which are considered standard components of a sentence, the
reader fills in the missing parts: (“[Do you call that] a virtuoso
performance? [That musician is] some virtuoso.”)
Mark Nichol on January 14, 2013 | 5 Comments | Continue Reading...
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writing
Pronunciation: /ˈrʌɪtɪŋ/
Translate writing | into French | into German | into Italian | into
Spanish
Definition of writing
noun
[mass noun]
* 1the activity or skill of writing: parents want schools to
concentrate on reading, writing, and arithmetic
* a sequence of letters, words, or symbols marked on a surface: a
leather product with gold writing on it he asked them to put their
complaints in writing
* handwriting: his writing looked crabbed
* 2the activity or occupation of composing text for publication: she
made a decent living from writing
* written work, especially with regard to its style or quality: the
writing is straightforward and accessible
* (writings) books, stories, or other written works: the writings of
Gertrude Stein
* (the Writings) the Hagiographa.
Phrases
the writing (or North American handwriting) is on the wall
there are clear signs that something unpleasant or unwelcome is
going to happen: the writing was on the wall for the old system
[with biblical allusion to Dan. 5:5, 25–8]
writing in other Oxford dictionaries
Definition of writing in the dictionary US English
More results for writing
* write Br. Eng
* writing pad Br. Eng
* writing case Br. Eng
* writing desk Br. Eng
* writing paper Br. Eng
* mirror writing Br. Eng
Result list for writing
Nearby words
* write-once
* write-protect
* write-up
* writer
* writer to the Signet
* writer-in-residence
* writerly
* writhe
* writhen
* writing
* writing case
* writing desk
* writing pad
* writing paper
* written
* WRNS
* Wrocław
* wrong
* wrong'un
Copyright © 2013 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved |
Privacy policy and legal notice | Credits | Browse dictionary
British & World version | US Version | Versión en español
abcemb.jpg (14862 bytes)
hxwrit.gif (4534 bytes)
Language existed long before writing, emerging probably
simultaneously with sapience, abstract thought and the Genus Homo.
In my opinion, the signature event that separated the emergence of
palaeohumans from their anthropoid progenitors was not tool-making
but a rudimentary oral communication that replaced the hoots and
gestures still used by lower primates. The transfer of more complex
information, ideas and concepts from one individual to another, or
to a group, was the single most advantageous evolutionary adaptation
for species preservation. As long ago as 25,000-30,000 years BP,
humans were painting pictures on cave walls. Whether these pictures
were telling a "story" or represented some type of "spirit house" or
ritual exercise is not known.
2d2.jpg (35971 bytes)
The advent of a writing system, however, seems to coincide with the
transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian
encampments when it became necessary to count ones property, whether
it be parcels of land, animals or measures of grain or to transfer
that property to another individual or another settlement. We see
the first evidence for this with incised "counting tokens" about
9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile crescent.
token1.gif (19914 bytes) token2.gif (4877 bytes) token3.gif (11207
bytes)
token4.gif (12415 bytes) token5.gif (10926 bytes) token6.gif (5144
bytes)
Around 4100-3800 BCE, the tokens began to be symbols that could be
impressed or inscribed in clay to represent a record of land, grain
or cattle and a written language was beginning to develop. One of
the earliest examples was found in the excavations of Uruk in
Mesopotamia at a level representing the time of the crystallization
of the Sumerian culture.
Titelbild.html (21634 bytes)
The pictures began as representing what they were, pictographs, and
eventually, certain pictures represented an idea or concept,
ideographs, and finally to represent sounds.
head.gif (96 bytes) foot.gif (98 bytes) sun_round.gif (92 bytes)
hand.gif (106 bytes) female.gif (97 bytes)
head foot sun "day" hand woman
Eventually, the pictographs were stylized, rotated and in impressed
in clay with a wedge shaped stylus to become the script known as
Cuneiform. The pictograph for woman, as seen above became
munus.gif (132 bytes) .
Written language was the product of an agrarian society. These
societies were centered around the cultivation of grain. A natural
result of the cultivation and storage of grain is the production of
beer. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the very oldest
written inscriptions concern the celebration of beer and the daily
ration alotted to each citizen.
Mtile.gif (40765 bytes)
Early cylinder seal depicting beer production
It's tempting to claim that the development of a writing system was
necessitated by the need to keep track of beer, but perhaps we can
be satisfied that it was just part of it.
The signs of the Sumerians were adopted by the East Semitic peoples
of Mesopotamia and Akkadian became the first Semitic language and
would be used by the Babylonians and Assyrians. The Akkadian
characters continued to represent syllables with defined vowels.
For the next step toward the development of an alphabet, we must go
to Egypt where picture writing had developed sometime near the end
of the 4th millennium BC. One of the earliest examples is the name
of NAR-MER, either the first or second Pharoah of an united Egypt in
3100 BCE. The name appears as two syllabic figures between the
cows' heads on the Kings cosmetic pallete.
cdpanarm.jpg (51924 bytes)
nar-mer.gif (313 bytes)
First glyph "Nar" (Egyptian "monster fish," "cuttle fish.")
Second glyph "Mar" is a pictograph of a drill or borer
Unlike Akkadian, the Egyptian syllabic system had no definitive
vowels. Some hieroglyphs were biliteral, some triliteral. Others
were determinatives that at the end of the word gave a sense of the
word and others were idiographs. Eventually, however, certain
Egyptian hieroglyphs such as mouth.gif (562 bytes) which was
pronounced r'i meaning "mouth" became the pictograph for the sound
of R with any vowel. The pictograph for "water" pronounced nu
river.gif (1017 bytes) became the symbol for the consonantal sound
of N. This practice of using a pictograph to stand for the first
sound in the word it stood for is called acrophony and was the first
step in the development of an ALPHABET or the "One Sign-One sound"
system of writing. The Egyptian consonants were:
vulture.gif (1380 bytes) A glottal stop similar to the Hebrew Alef
onereed.gif (580 bytes) Consonantal Y, like the Hebrew Yod
tworeeds.gif (974 bytes) Sometimes abbreviated as \ \, sound of Y or ee
used in the last syllable
arm.gif (752 bytes) Gutteral sound corresponding to Hebrew Ayin
chick.gif (979 bytes) W or U, corresponds to Hebrew Waw
foot2.gif (844 bytes) Sound of B
stool.gif (715 bytes) Sound of P
viper.gif (823 bytes) Sound of F
owl.gif (1475 bytes) Sound of M
river.gif (1017 bytes) Sound of N
mouth.gif (562 bytes) Sound of R
twistedrope.gif (811 bytes) Sound of emphatic H
sunthing.gif (749 bytes) Pharyngeal H, like Hebrew Het
cowgut.gif (625 bytes) Like German CH as in ich
bolt.gif (475 bytes) Sound of Z
foldedcloth.gif (829 bytes) Sound of S
lake.gif (410 bytes) SH, Corresponds to Hebrew Shin
hill.gif (428 bytes) Q, corresponds to Hebrew Qof
basket.gif (988 bytes) Sound of K
potstand.gif (661 bytes) Hard G
bread.gif (659 bytes) Sound of T
hobblerope.gif (565 bytes) Sound of TCH, as in hatch
hand2.gif (471 bytes) Sound of D
cobra.gif (907 bytes) Sound of DJ, or Hebrew Tsade
See banner below as source of hieroglyphs
The Egyptians used the acrophones as a consonantal system along with
their syllabic and idiographic system, therefore the alphabet was
not yet born. The acrophonic principal of Egyptian clearly
influenced Proto-Canaanite/Proto-Sinaitic around 1700 BC.
Inscriptions found at the site of the ancient torquoise mines at
Serabit-al-Khadim in the Sinai use less than 30 signs, definite
evidence of a consonantal alphabet rather than a syllabic system.
protocan1.gif (2827 bytes) protocan2.gif (2659 bytes)
This is the alphabet that was the precursor to Phoenician, Greek and
Roman. Meanwhile, in the North another experiment in a consonantal
alphabet was taking place. Excavations of the ancient city of
Ugarit, modern Ras Shamra, has produced texts in a cuneiform script
that was also consonantal. In the order of the Alef-Beyt:
ugaritic.gif (2194 bytes)
The Semitic languages diversified along geographic lines as
Northwest Semitic, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. Northwest
Semitic consists of 2 major groups, Aramaic and Canaanite.
Canaanite is represented by Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Hebrew.
Northeast Semitic consists of the ancestral Akkadian, represented by
Babylonian and Assyrian. The Southwest and Southeast Semitic
languages consisted of North and South Arabic and Ethiopic.
The term epigraphy is generally used for writing on hard durable
materials such as stone or postsherds (ostraca) but some use the
term for any inscriptional remnants of a past civilization.
Palaeography is the study of the progressive changes and
developments in the form of letters over time and is usually applied
to writing on less durable materials such as parchment, leather or
papyrus. An experienced palaeographer can often date a specific
manuscript with fair accuracy. Epigraphy on stone is usually harder
to date since more archaic forms were often retained for monumental
inscriptions. The causes of changes in scripts were primarily
sociological and psychological, a script hand being a reflection of
styles and trends for particular time periods. Unfortunately, this
is not measurable for the palaeographer whose primary tool is a
systematic collection or database of thousands of exemplars of
written material of known date.
Spelling and the sequence of characters in a word and their setting
in a grammatic structure is the provenance of Orthography.
Using the fonts I have created for classroom work by my various
scholar friends in the discussion lists, I have arranged the
following inscriptions of Genesis 1:1 to display the development of
the Semitic scripts since the 10th century BCE.
Archaic Scripts (click on font for download)
Old Phoenician 10th-9th cent. BCE [scr1_op.gif]
Moabite 850 BCE [scr2_mob.gif]
Early Aramaic 800 BCE [scr3_ea.gif]
Siloam Inscription 700 BCE [scr4_sil.gif]
Samaritan * [scr5_sam.gif]
Lachish Ostraca 6th cent. BCE [scr6_lac.gif]
*Samaritan retained the use of the archaic script.
Aramaic Square Scripts
Elephantine Payrus 5th cent. BCE [scr7_el.gif]
Nabataean Aramaic 1st cent. CE [scr7_nab.gif]
Great Isaiah Scroll 200-100 BCE [scr8_dss.gif]
Habakkuk Pesher 150-100 BCE [scr9_hab.gif]
Codex Leningradensis 1010 CE. [scr10_codlen.jpg]
Modern Hebrew [scr11_mod.gif]
The Phoenician Alphabet was adopted by the early Greeks who earned
their place in alphabetic history by symbolizing the vowels.
Therefore, the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek scripts all came from the
Phoenician. The Greek alphabet led to Latin and Cyrillic. Aramaic
led to Arabic and most of the scripts used in India. The entire
Western World became the inheritors of those beer drinkers in
Mesopotamia and the torquoise miners in the Sinai.
Phoenician phoenalf.gif (2000 bytes)
Early Greek egreekalf.gif (1735 bytes)
Roman romanalf.gif (1752 bytes)
ryanlog.jpg (6151 bytes) Donald Ryan's Ancient Languages and Scripts
Like the Egyptian Hieroglyphs? Check out
ttotcp4.jpg (8808 bytes)
Want more fonts? Back to Fonts page
home17.gif (6026 bytes)
__________________ [searchgbutton.gif]-Submit
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HISTORY OF WRITING
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The first four millennia
The first writing
Evolution of a script
Cuneiform
Hieroglyphs and papyrus
Seals of the Indus valley
Chinese characters
The alphabet
Scripts used by printers
19th century
To be completed
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The first writing
Writing has its origins in the strip of fertile land stretching from
the Nile up into the area often referred to as the Fertile Crescent.
This name was given, in the early 20th century, to the inverted U-shape
of territory that stretches up the east Mediterranean coast and then
curves east through northern Syria and down the Euphrates and the
Tigris to the Persian Gulf.
The first known writing derives from the lower reaches of the two
greatest rivers in this extended region, the Nile and the Tigris. So
the two civilizations separately responsible for this totally
transforming human development are the Egyptian and the Sumerian (in
what is now Iraq). It has been conventional to give priority, by a
short margin, to Sumer – dating the Sumerian script to about 3100 BC
and the Egyptian version a century or so later.
However, in 1988 a German archaeologist, Günter Dreyer, unearths at
Abydos, on the Nile in central Egypt, small bone and ivory tablets
recording in early hieroglyphic form the items delivered to a temple –
mainly linen and oil.
These fragments have been carbon-dated to between 3300 and 3200 BC.
Meanwhile the dating of the earliest cuneiform tablets from Sumeria has
been pushed further back, also to around 3200 BC. So any claim to
priority by either side is at present too speculative to carry
conviction.
Evolution of a script
Most early writing systems begin with small images used as words,
literally depicting the thing in question. But pictograms of this kind
are limited. Some physical objects are too difficult to depict. And
many words are concepts rather than objects.
There are several ways in which early writing evolves beyond the
pictorial stage. One is by combining pictures to suggest a concept.
Another is by a form of pun, in which a pictorial version of one object
is modified to suggest another quite different object which sounds the
same when spoken.
An example of both developments could begin with a simple symbol
representing a roof - a shallow inverted V. This would be a valid
character to mean 'house'. If one places under this roof a similar
symbol for a woman, the resulting character could well stand for some
such idea as 'home' or 'family'. (In fact, in Chinese, a woman under a
roof is one of the characters which can be used to mean 'peace').
This is a conceptual character. The punning kind might put under the
same roof a sloping symbol representing the bank of a river. The
combined character, roof and bank, would then stand for a financial
institution - the type of 'house' which is a 'bank'.
Cuneiform in Mesopotamia: from 3100 BC
In about 3200 BC temple officials in Sumer develop a reliable and
lasting method of keeping track of the animals and other goods which
are the temple's wealth. On lumps of wet clay the scribes draw a
simpified picture of the item in question. They then make a similar
mark in the clay for the number counted and recorded. When allowed to
bake hard in the sun, the clay tablet becomes a permanent document. .
Significantly the chief official of many Sumerian temples is known by a
word, sangu, which seems to mean 'accountant'. But however non-literary
the purpose, these practical jottings in Sumer are the first steps in
writing.
As writing develops, a standardized method of doing it begins to
emerge. This is essential to the very purpose of writing, making it
capable of carrying a message over unlimited distances of space or
time. Doing so depends on the second scribe, in a faraway place or the
distant future, being able to read what the first scribe has written
In Mesopotamia clay remains the most common writing surface, and the
standard writing implement becomes the end of a sharply cut reed. These
two ingredients define this early human script. Characters are formed
from the wedge-shaped marks which the reed makes when pressed into the
damp clay, so the style of writing becomes known as cuneiform (from the
Latin cuneus, meaning wedge).
Hieroglyphs and papyrus in Egypt: from 3000 BC
The second civilization to develop writing, shortly after the
Sumerians, is Egypt. The Egyptian characters are much more directly
pictorial in kind than the Sumerian, but the system of suggesting
objects and concepts is similar. The Egyptian characters are called
hieroglyphs by the Greeks in about 500 BC, because by that time this
form of writing is reserved for holy texts; hieros and glypho mean
'sacred' and 'engrave' in Greek.
Because of the importance of hieroglyphic inscriptions in temples and
tombs, much of the creation of these beautiful characters is by
painters, sculptors in relief and craftsmen modelling in plaster. But
with the introduction of papyrus, the Egyptian script is also the
business of scribes.
The Egyptian scribe uses a fine reed pen to write on the smooth surface
of the papyrus scroll. Inevitably the act of writing causes the
hieroglyphs to become more fluid than the strictly formal versions
carved and painted in tombs.
Even so, the professional dignity of the scribes ensures that standards
do not slip. There gradually emerge three official versions of the
script (known technically as hieratic) which is used by the scribes.
There is one, the most formal, for religious documents; one for
literature and official documents; and one for private letters.
In about 700 BC the pressure of business causes the Egyptian scribes to
develop a more abbreviated version of the hieratic script. Its
constituent parts are still the same Egyptian hieroglyphs, established
more than 2000 years previously, but they are now so elided that the
result looks like an entirely new script. Known as demotic ('for the
people'), it is harder to read than the earlier written versions of
Egyptian.
Both hieroglyphs and demotic continue to be used until about 400 AD.
Thereafter their secret is forgotten, until the chance discovery of the
Rosetta stone makes it possible for the hieroglyphic code to be cracked
in the 19th century.
The seals of the Indus valley: from 2500 BC
As in the other great early civilizations, the bureaucrats of the Indus
valley have the benefit of writing to help them in their
administration. The Indus script, which has not yet been deciphered, is
known from thousands of seals, carved in steatite or soapstone.
Usually the centre of each seal is occupied by a realistic depiction of
an animal, with above it a short line of formal symbols. The lack of
longer inscriptions or texts suggests that this script is probably
limited to trading and accountancy purposes, with the signs
establishing quantities and ownership of a commodity.
Chinese characters: from 1600 BC
The last of the early civilizations to develop writing is China, in
about 1600 BC. But China outdoes the others in devising a system which
has evolved, as a working script, from that day to this. Chinese
characters are profoundly ill-suited to such labour-saving innovations
as printing, typewriting or word-processing. Yet they have survived.
They have even provided the script for an entirely different language,
Japanese.
The Non-phonetic Chinese script has been a crucial binding agent in
China's vast empire. Officials from far-flung places, often unable to
speak each other's language, have been able to communicate fluently in
writing.
Page 1 of 5 Next page
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A Resource for Teachers, Clinicians, Parents, and Students by
the Brain Injury Association of New York State.
Tutorial: Written Composition
WHAT IS WRITTEN COMPOSITION?
Writing a composition is a complex activity that includes the
mechanics of writing, including handwriting (or keyboarding, using
an adaptive device, etc.), spelling, and the basics of language
knowledge (i.e., word morphology, syntax, and vocabulary). In
addition it includes the following cognitive, meta-cognitive,
self-regulatory, and motivational aspects:
* generating ideas to put into print
* planning what to say and how to say it
* organizing the ideas into a coherent whole
* recognizing the needs of readers and how to meet those needs
* translating these plans into a written text, including a style of
writing and word choice appropriate to the writing task and
projected readers
* remembering all of the components that need to be included in
producing the composition
* self-monitoring the process and reviewing the content,
organization, and mechanics and then editing as needed
* possessing the cognitive capacity to deal with all of these aspects
of complexity
* possessing the confidence, motivation, and perseverance to engage
in the hard work needed to create a well written product
Written composition also includes all of the processes related to
reading comprehension. (See Tutorial on Reading Comprehension.)
Reading comprehension includes a large number of linguistic,
cognitive, strategic/self-regulatory, and motivational processes
involved in deriving meaning from written language (including books
and other forms of written language) and constructing meaning from
written language. Problems in any of these areas may contribute to
writing difficulties.
Because of the complexity of its demands, writing is considered by
many students with and without disability to be their most
challenging academic task. College and university professors often
comment on the inadequate writing proficiency of their undergraduate
and even graduate students. Therefore it is no surprise that writing
is among the major concerns for students with learning and other
cognitive and language disabilities.
WHY IS WRITTEN COMPOSITION IMPORTANT FOR MANY STUDENTS AFTER TBI?
The writing of students with learning problems, regardless of their
cause, tends to be short, comprising a list of topic ideas versus a
coherent and effectively elaborated discussion. The writing tends to
be done with little or no planning and with little or no monitoring,
evaluating, revising, and editing. Students with learning problems
tend to have difficulty sustaining the effort needed to write well,
a problem that is worsened if the student has difficulty with
writing mechanics (e.g., handwriting, spelling). Generally these
students produce more output when allowed to dictate their
assignment rather than write it.
If the student with TBI was competent with writing mechanics (e.g.,
hand writing and spelling) before the injury, it is likely that this
competence will return. However, the characteristic problems
encountered after TBI may make the other writing problems listed
above even worse. For example, associated with frontal lobe injury
are the following difficulties that negatively affect writing:
difficulty generating ideas; difficulty planning and organizing a
multi-faceted task; reduced insight into the needs of others,
including the readers of ones writing; reduced space in working
memory, thereby making it difficult to hold in mind all of the
components of a writing task; reduced self-awareness of impairments
and inefficient self-monitoring, thereby reducing the likelihood of
reviewing, revising, and editing; and reduced perseverance. (See
Tutorials on Organization, Memory, Attention, Egocentrism,
Self-Awareness.)
Students who are injured in the early grades when writing skills are
being developed may be seriously impaired in all of the skills that
go into proficient writing, including writing mechanics..
Specifically related to the executive function/self-regulatory
aspects of writing (associated with frontal lobe injury), students
with TBI may not:
* understand the nature of their difficulties (See Tutorial on
Self-Awareness.)
* know that there are special procedures (strategies) that help them
to succeed in difficult writing tasks (See Tutorial on Cognitive
and Learning Strategies.)
* use the procedures and supports available to them as they plan
their writing and then execute the writing plan
* consider their writing from the perspective of the reader (See
Tutorial on Egocentrism.)
* monitor their successes and failures (See Tutorial on
Self-Monitoring.)
* persevere in planning, executing, and monitoring their writing
* attribute their successes and failures correctly to their own
effort
* take responsibility for doing what they need to do to succeed with
their writing
For all of these reasons, writing (written composition) tends to be
a serious difficulty for students with TBI.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN FEATURES OF INTERVENTION AND SUPPORT THAT ARE
IMPORTANT FOR STUDENTS WITH WRITTEN COMPOSITION PROBLEMS AFTER TBI?
Understanding the Problem
As always, step one in helping students with complex disability is
understanding the problem. For example, difficulty with written
composition could be a consequence of weakness in any of the domains
(outlined above) that contribute to successful writing. In addition,
the student might have difficulty with writing because of attention
problems, poor orientation to task, behavioral resistance,
discouragement as a result of a history of failure with writing, or
other underlying problem. The problem exploration steps on this web
site should help staff and family identify the factors associated
with the student's writing difficulties. Intervention can then be
targeted to the set of problems known to contribute to the student's
difficulty with writing.
Environmental Compensations
Students with writing problems should receive some combination of
the intervention strategies outlined below (under "Improving
Writing") to improve their writing. However, there are also
environmental compensatory procedures that might be useful while
also implementing intervention strategies.
* Dictation: Students with relatively superior oral composition
skills can dictate their compositions to another person or into a
tape recorder. Their dictation can then be written (by the student
or others), with coached revising and editing to follow.
Alternatively the student can use software designed to transcribe
dictation into a written product (e.g., Dragon Naturally Speaking).
This option has the advantage of potentially facilitating the
student's independence, but may require considerable effort to gain
facility with the software.
* Models: Models of finished products can be shown to the students so
that they know what their composition should generally look like
when it is finished.
* Time lines, checklists, editing "cheat sheets": Students with and
without disability tend to benefit from time lines for their
writing, a checklist of components to include in the writing, and
an editing "cheat sheet" that highlights likely editing needs and
how to edit.
* Graphic Organizers: Teachers can show students a graphic organizer
(e.g., a series of boxes and connecting arrows) that illustrates
the content and the organization for a piece of writing. (See
Tutorial on Advance Organizers.)
* Oral Advance Organizer: Many students with difficulty generating
and organizing ideas for written composition benefit from
pre-writing of points made during a conversation in which the
teacher (or parent) asks questions that prompt thinking and
organizing. These questions would include: "What topic would you
like to/are you supposed to write about?" What do you know about
that topic... make a list." "What do you have to find out... make a
list." "What would be important to say first to introduce your
topic... write that down." "After the introduction, what would be
important to say next?" "Let's think of something really
interesting to say about this" and so on.
* Collaborative Writing: Collaborative writing is a component of the
instructional program described in the next section. But it could
also be considered an environmental compensation. Using this
approach, students with significant writing problems who are
unlikely to produce anything resembling effective written
compositions may work collaboratively for an extended period of
time with teachers and parents as they work to master basic skills
and strategies related to writing. With this approach, there will
be meaningful written products during an extended period of basic
skill development, thus facilitating motivation to write.
Improving Students' Writing: Process and Product
The goals of a comprehensive writing program designed to improve
written composition, elementary school through high school, include
the following
* to improve the written products, including mechanics (handwriting,
spelling, grammar), elaboration of topics, organization of topics,
word choice, and general style of writing
* to improve the students' planful, strategic manner of writing
* to increase the students' knowledge of writing as a process
* to improve all executive function/self-regulatory aspects of
writing, including self-awareness, goal setting, planning and
organizing, self-instructing, self-monitoring, self-correcting, and
self reinforcing
* to enhance motivation and improve perseverance - and in general to
improve self-concept as a writer
Therefore writing instruction should be organized within a broadly
focused instructional approach that teaches mechanics, writing
strategies, self-regulation of strategies and of the writing
process, and correct attribution of success and failure. The
instructional process should also explicitly address motivation and
self-concept as a writer.
It is known that the writing of students with learning problems
improves when the "self-regulatory" aspects of writing are
"scaffolded", that is cued and supported by the teacher or parent.
For example, when students are given a selection of evaluation
statements about their writing (e.g., "This paragraph is complete
and says everything I want to say") and a selection of revising
statements to apply to their writing (e.g., "I need to say this more
clearly; I need to say more."), their writing improves. Furthermore,
programs of intervention designed to teach writing strategies and
self-regulation through the writing process have been shown to be
very successful for a variety of students with learning, cognitive,
emotional, and other disabilities.
The writing instructional program with the most substantial body of
research support is called "Self-Regulated Strategy Development"
(SRSD, Steve Graham and Karen Harris). The approach has been shown
to be effective with students from grade two through high school. It
has been effectively used with regular education students, at risk
students, and students with environmentally challenged backgrounds,
learning disabilities, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and
emotional and behavioral problems. Because the approach has this
extensive evidence base and is consistent with the needs of many
students with TBI, it will be used to structure this section of the
tutorial on instructional strategies. SRSD is sometimes integrated
within - and supplements - the Writer's Workshop, a popular approach
to writing in the schools. SRSD has also been used in other
instructional domains, including reading and mathematics.
SRSD has five interacting goal areas, which are integrated in the
instructional process:
* Improve written products (behavior)
* Improve planful/strategic manner of composition (cognition)
* Increase knowledge about writing and the writing process
(meta-cognition)
* Improve all aspects of self-regulation related to writing (e.g.,
self-assessment, goal setting, self-instructing, self-monitoring,
self-reinforcing, managing the environment)
* Enhance motivation and sense of self as a writer (affect)
Consistent with the Tutorial on Executive Function/Self-Regulation
Routines, self-regulation goals are integrated throughout the
instructional process. This process of instruction avoids isolated
skills training, decontextualized learning of subskills, or passive
learning of any sort. In contrast, students are engaged at every
stage and there is meaningful writing at every stage, while at the
same time explicit instruction of strategies and other processes is
provided.
Stages in SRSD instruction for written composition:
Stage 1: Develop background knowledge and skills. For example, in
order to write a good story, the student may need to learn the
components of a typical story. At this stage, the self-regulatory
component of goal setting might be introduced.
Stage 2: Explicitly teach and discuss the strategy. At this stage, a
specific writing strategy is taught, for example SPACE for story
writing: S: setting (characters, place and time); P: purpose (what
starts the action?); A: action (how does the action unfold?); C:
conclusion (how does the story end? how is the action resolved?); E:
emotions (how do the main characters feel about the events of the
story?) At this stage, the self-regulatory components of
self-instructing and self-monitoring might be introduced.
Stage 3: Model the process of strategic writing: At this stage, the
teacher demonstrates for the student how the strategies work in
producing a good product. The teacher also models and reinforces
goal setting, self-instructing, and self-monitoring.
Stage 4: Memorize the strategy mnemonics: The strategy must be
practiced until it is memorized.
Stage 5: Engage in supported collaborative practice: At this stage
the teacher and student practice writing together and jointly use
their strategies and self-regulatory scripts (now including
self-reinforcing), with the teacher fading support for both as it
becomes possible to do so.
Stage 6: Demonstrate independent performance: Strategy procedures
and self-regulation scripts are reinforced, and the student is
encouraged to fade their explicit use as they become automatic.
Composition Aspects of Writing
To improve the length, organization, and completeness of the
student's writing, composition strategies are taught. Some of these
strategies relate to the general process of writing, others to the
components and organization of specific genres of writing (e.g.,
narrative versus persuasive writing). For example, within the SRSD
instructional process, there are two possible shorthand strategies
for the general process of writing. Students are encouraged to
memorize the abbreviations.
POW
P: Pick a topic to write about.
O: Organize possible ideas into a plan.
W: Write and keep planning.
THINK - PLAN - WRITE
Think: Who will read it? Why am I writing?
Plan: What will I say?
Write: Write and say more!!
Strategies for specific genres (or types) of writing include the
following:
For narrative (story) writing: WWW What 2 How 2
W; Who are the main characters?
W; When does the story take place?
W; Where does the story take place?
What; What do the characters want to do?
What: What happens when they try to do it?
How: How does the story end?
How: How do the main characters feel?
Also for narrative (story) writing: SPACE
S: Setting: characters, place and time
P: Purpose: What starts the action? What is the problem or issue
that leads to the action?
A: Action: How does the action unfold?
C: Conclusion: How does the story end; how is the action resolved?
E: Emotions: How do the main characters feel about the events of the
story?
For persuasive essays: TREE
For young writers
T: Tell what you believe (State your topic sentence)
R: Give two or more reasons (Why do I believe this?)
E: End it (Wrap it up right)
E: Examine it (Do I have all of my parts)
For older writers, TREE shifts to:
T: Tell what you believe (State your topic sentence)
R: Give two or more reasons (Why do I believe this?)
E: Explain the reasons
E: End it
For students who are concrete in their thinking, graphic organizers
(e.g., boxes connected in a certain order) can be added to
illustrate visually the components of a genre of writing and how
those components relate to each other. Please see the Tutorial on
Advance Organizers for details about graphic organizers.
Self-Regulatory Aspects of Writing
As outlined earlier, facilitating the self-regulatory dimensions of
writing is embedded throughout the instructional process. SRSD
assumes that good writing not only requires the use of effective
writing strategies (and good mechanics), but also requires mature
self-regulation throughout the process of writing. These
self-regulatory processes include:
* Self-Awareness: To succeed with writing, students need to know that
writing is difficult for them and, specifically, what their weak
areas are so that they can compensate effectively.
* Goal Setting: To succeed with writing, students need to know what
they are trying to accomplish with their writing, who the audience
is, and what the audience needs.
* Planning and Organizing: Written compositions are complex products
with many components. To succeed, students need to know how to plan
and organize their writing process.
* Self-Instructing: To succeed with writing, students need
strategies, but also need to acquire a habit of instructing
themselves to use their strategies.
* Self-Monitoring: To succeed with writing, students need to pay
attention to the process and notice when they are missing a
component or making mistakes.
* Self-Correcting: To succeed with writing, students need to edit
their work for mechanics (handwriting, spelling, grammar),
elaboration, organization, and style.
* Self Reinforcing: To develop a positive sense of self as a writer
and to maintain motivation, students need to reward themselves when
they complete aspects of their writing and especially when they
receive positive feedback from teachers.
See the Tutorial on Executive Function/Self-Regulatory Routines for
more information on self-regulation.
Motivational Aspects
Writing is hard for most students. Even professional writers freely
admit that writing is hard. Students with learning and information
processing problems, including those with TBI, have particular
difficulty with writing and easily become discouraged. This leads to
resistance with writing and, in turn, to written products that are
short and inadequate in many ways. Writing is complex and time
consuming, thus requiring high levels of motivation and
perseverance.
How is this motivation achieved? (See Tutorial on Motivation.)
Stages 3 and 5 of the SRSD instructional process outlined above
emphasize a collaborative approach to writing. Teachers and parents
can model the writing process and then work collaboratively with the
students before they are expected to produce a good piece of writing
independently. This collaboration ensures that frustration is
minimized and that the student experiences at least a modest level
of success, one of the keystones of motivation.
In addition, students are explicitly taught writing strategies that,
if followed, guarantee that the written product will include the
necessary components in their correct order. This additional support
also contributes to success and a feeling of accomplishment.
Furthermore, students are encouraged to work together in pairs or
groups of writers, thereby adding to the contributors to success as
well as the motivation that (often) comes with group work.
Like most good instruction, SRSD is criterion based rather than time
based; that is, the students don't move on until they achieve
adequate mastery of each step in the instructional process. And the
students are encouraged to monitor and reinforce themselves as they
proceed successfully through the steps of writing. The students'
writing should also be shared with others so that there is the
feeling of accomplishment associated with completing a project that
has a purpose and good outcome.
Motivation is enhanced when some of the writing assignments have a
larger purpose, for example letters to congressman about issues in
which the students take an interest. Teachers and parents should
model enthusiasm as they write with the student (e.g., "We did it!
This sounds terrific! I feel great when I'm able to say what I want
to say and say it clearly!").
Written by Mark Ylvisaker, Ph.D. with the assistance of Mary
Hibbard, Ph.D. and Timothy Feeney, Ph.D.
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Writing
The ancient Egyptians believed that it was important to record and
communicate information about religion and government. Thus, they
invented written scripts that could be used to record this information.
The most famous of all ancient Egyptian scripts is hieroglyphic.
However, throughout three thousand years of ancient Egyptian
civilisation, at least three other scripts were used for different
purposes. Using these scripts, scribes were able to preserve the
beliefs, history and ideas of ancient Egypt in temple and tomb walls
and on papyrus scrolls.
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Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper
__________________________________________________________________
Philosophical writing is different from the writing you'll be asked to
do in other courses. Most of the strategies described below will also
serve you well when writing for other courses, but don't automatically
assume that they all will. Nor should you assume that every writing
guideline you've been given by other teachers is important when you're
writing a philosophy paper. Some of those guidelines are routinely
violated in good philosophical prose (e.g., see the guidelines on
grammar, below).
Contents
* What Does One Do in a Philosophy Paper?
* Three Stages of Writing
+ Early Stages
+ Write a Draft
+ Rewrite, and Keep Rewriting
* Minor Points
* How You'll Be Graded
__________________________________________________________________
What Does One Do in a Philosophy Paper?
1. A philosophy paper consists of the reasoned defense of some claim
Your paper must offer an argument. It can't consist in the mere
report of your opinions, nor in a mere report of the opinions of
the philosophers we discuss. You have to defend the claims you
make. You have to offer reasons to believe them.
So you can't just say:
My view is that P.
You must say something like:
My view is that P. I believe this because...
or:
I find that the following considerations...provide a convincing
argument for P.
Similarly, don't just say:
Descartes says that Q.
Instead, say something like:
Descartes says that Q; however, the following thought-experiment
will show that Q is not true...
or:
Descartes says that Q. I find this claim plausible, for the
following reasons...
There are a variety of things a philosophy paper can aim to
accomplish. It usually begins by putting some thesis or argument on
the table for consideration. Then it goes on to do one or two of
the following:
+ Criticize that argument; or show that certain arguments for
the thesis are no good
+ Defend the argument or thesis against someone else's criticism
+ Offer reasons to believe the thesis
+ Offer counter-examples to the thesis
+ Contrast the strengths and weaknesses of two opposing views
about the thesis
+ Give examples which help explain the thesis, or which help to
make the thesis more plausible
+ Argue that certain philosophers are committed to the thesis by
their other views, though they do not come out and explicitly
endorse the thesis
+ Discuss what consequences the thesis would have, if it were
true
+ Revise the thesis, in the light of some objection
No matter which of these aims you set for yourself, you have to
explicitly present reasons for the claims you make. Students often
feel that since it's clear to them that some claim is true, it does
not need much argument. But it's very easy to overestimate the
strength of your own position. After all, you already accept it.
You should assume that your audience does not already accept your
position; and you should treat your paper as an attempt to persuade
such an audience. Hence, don't start with assumptions which your
opponents are sure to reject. If you're to have any chance of
persuading people, you have to start from common assumptions you
all agree to.
2. A good philosophy paper is modest and makes a small point; but it
makes that point clearly and straightforwardly, and it offers good
reasons in support of it
People very often attempt to accomplish too much in a philosophy
paper. The usual result of this is a paper that's hard to read, and
which is full of inadequately defended and poorly explained claims.
So don't be over-ambitious. Don't try to establish any
earth-shattering conclusions in your 5-6 page paper. Done properly,
philosophy moves at a slow pace.
3. Originality
The aim of these papers is for you to show that you understand the
material and that you're able to think critically about it. To do
this, your paper does have to show some independent thinking.
That doesn't mean you have to come up with your own theory, or that
you have to make a completely original contribution to human
thought. There will be plenty of time for that later on. An ideal
paper will be clear and straightforward (see below), will be
accurate when it attributes views to other philosophers (see
below), and will contain thoughtful critical responses to the texts
we read. It need not always break completely new ground.
But you should try to come up with your own arguments, or your own
way of elaborating or criticizing or defending some argument we
looked at in class. Merely summarizing what others have said won't
be enough.
__________________________________________________________________
Three Stages of Writing
1. Early Stages
The early stages of writing a philosophy paper include everything you
do before you sit down and write your first draft. These early stages
will involve writing, but you won't yet be trying to write a complete
paper. You should instead be taking notes on the readings, sketching
out your ideas, trying to explain the main argument you want to
advance, and composing an outline.
Discuss the issues with others
As I said above, your papers are supposed to demonstrate that you
understand and can think critically about the material we discuss in
class. One of the best ways to check how well you understand that
material is to try to explain it to someone who isn't already familiar
with it. I've discovered time and again while teaching philosophy that
I couldn't really explain properly some article or argument I thought I
understood. This was because it was really more problematic or
complicated than I had realized. You will have this same experience. So
it's good to discuss the issues we raise in class with each other, and
with friends who aren't taking the class. This will help you understand
the issues better, and it will make you recognize what things you still
don't fully understand.
It's even more valuable to talk to each other about what you want to
argue in your paper. When you have your ideas worked out well enough
that you can explain them to someone else, verbally, then you're ready
to sit down and start making an outline.
Make an outline
Before you begin writing any drafts, you need to think about the
questions: In what order should you explain the various terms and
positions you'll be discussing? At what point should you present your
opponent's position or argument? In what order should you offer your
criticisms of your opponent? Do any of the points you're making
presuppose that you've already discussed some other point, first? And
so on.
The overall clarity of your paper will greatly depend on its structure.
That is why it is important to think about these questions before you
begin to write.
I strongly recommend that you make an outline of your paper, and of the
arguments you'll be presenting, before you begin to write. This lets
you organize the points you want to make in your paper and get a sense
for how they are going to fit together. It also helps ensure that
you're in a position to say what your main argument or criticism is,
before you sit down to write a full draft of your paper. When students
get stuck writing, it's often because they haven't yet figured out what
they're trying to say.
Give your outline your full attention. It should be fairly detailed.
(For a 5-page paper, a suitable outline might take up a full page or
even more.)
I find that making an outline is at least 80% of the work of writing a
good philosophy paper. If you have a good outline, the rest of the
writing process will go much more smoothly.
Start Work Early
Philosophical problems and philosophical writing require careful and
extended reflection. Don't wait until two or three nights before the
paper is due to begin. That is very stupid. Writing a good philosophy
paper takes a great deal of preparation.
You need to leave yourself enough time to think about the topic and
write a detailed outline. Only then should you sit down to write a
complete draft. Once you have a complete draft, you should set it aside
for a day or two. Then you should come back to it and rewrite it.
Several times. At least 3 or 4. If you can, show it to your friends and
get their reactions to it. Do they understand your main point? Are
parts of your draft unclear or confusing to them?
All of this takes time. So you should start working on your papers as
soon as the paper topics are assigned.
2. Write a Draft
Once you've thought about your argument, and written an outline for
your paper, then you're ready to sit down and compose a complete draft.
Use simple prose
Don't shoot for literary elegance. Use simple, straightforward prose.
Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. Use familiar words. We'll
make fun of you if you use big words where simple words will do. These
issues are deep and difficult enough without your having to muddy them
up with pretentious or verbose language. Don't write using prose you
wouldn't use in conversation: if you wouldn't say it, don't write it.
You may think that since your TA and I already know a lot about this
subject, you can leave out a lot of basic explanation and write in a
super-sophisticated manner, like one expert talking to another. I
guarantee you that this will make your paper incomprehensible.
If your paper sounds as if it were written for a third-grade audience,
then you've probably achieved the right sort of clarity.
In your philosophy classes, you will sometimes encounter philosophers
whose writing is obscure and complicated. Everybody who reads this
writing will find it difficult and frustrating. The authors in question
are philosophically important despite their poor writing, not because
of it. So do not try to emulate their writing styles.
Make the structure of your paper obvious
You should make the structure of your paper obvious to the reader. Your
reader shouldn't have to exert any effort to figure it out. Beat him
over the head with it.
How can you do this?
First of all, use connective words, like:
* because, since, given this argument
* thus, therefore, hence, it follows that, consequently
* nevertheless, however, but
* in the first case, on the other hand
These will help your reader keep track of where your discussion is
going. Be sure you use these words correctly! If you say "P. Thus Q."
then you are claiming that P is a good reason to accept Q. You had
better be right. If you aren't, we'll complain. Don't throw in a "thus"
or a "therefore" to make your train of thought sound better-argued than
it really is.
Another way you can help make the structure of your paper obvious is by
telling the reader what you've done so far and what you're going to do
next. You can say things like:
* I will begin by...
* Before I say what is wrong with this argument, I want to...
* These passages suggest that...
* I will now defend this claim...
* Further support for this claim comes from...
* For example...
These signposts really make a big difference. Consider the following
two paper fragments:
...We've just seen how X says that P. I will now present two
arguments that not-P. My first argument is...
My second argument that not-P is...
X might respond to my arguments in several ways. For instance, he
could say that...
However this response fails, because...
Another way that X might respond to my arguments is by claiming
that...
This response also fails, because...
So we have seen that none of X's replies to my argument that not-P
succeed. Hence, we should reject X's claim that P.
I will argue for the view that Q.
There are three reasons to believe Q. Firstly...
Secondly...
Thirdly...
The strongest objection to Q says...
However, this objection does not succeed, for the following
reason...
Isn't it easy to see what the structure of these papers is? You want it
to be just as easy in your own papers.
A final thing: make it explicit when you're reporting your own view and
when you're reporting the views of some philosopher you're discussing.
The reader should never be in doubt about whose claims you're
presenting in a given paragraph.
You can't make the structure of your paper obvious if you don't know
what the structure of your paper is, or if your paper has no structure.
That's why making an outline is so important.
Be concise, but explain yourself fully
To write a good philosophy paper, you need to be concise but at the
same time explain yourself fully.
These demands might seem to pull in opposite directions. (It's as if
the first said "Don't talk too much," and the second said "Talk a
lot.") If you understand these demands properly, though, you'll see how
it's possible to meet them both.
* We tell you to be concise because we don't want you to ramble on
about everything you know about a given topic, trying to show how
learned and intelligent you are. Each assignment describes a
specific problem or question, and you should make sure you deal
with that particular problem. Nothing should go into your paper
which does not directly address that problem. Prune out everything
else. It is always better to concentrate on one or two points and
develop them in depth than to try to cram in too much. One or two
well-mapped paths are better than an impenetrable jungle.
Formulate the central problem or question you wish to address at
the beginning of your paper, and keep it in mind at all times. Make
it clear what the problem is, and why it is a problem. Be sure that
everything you write is relevant to that central problem. In
addition, be sure to say in the paper how it is relevant. Don't
make your reader guess.
* One thing I mean by "explain yourself fully" is that, when you have
a good point, you shouldn't just toss it off in one sentence.
Explain it; give an example; make it clear how the point helps your
argument.
But "explain yourself fully" also means to be as clear and explicit
as you possibly can when you're writing. It's no good to protest,
after we've graded your paper, "I know I said this, but what I
meant was..." Say exactly what you mean, in the first place. Part
of what you're being graded on is how well you can do that.
Pretend that your reader has not read the material you're
discussing, and has not given the topic much thought in advance.
This will of course not be true. But if you write as if it were
true, it will force you to explain any technical terms, to
illustrate strange or obscure distinctions, and to be as explicit
as possible when you summarize what some other philosopher said.
Comment: In fact, you can profitably take this one step further and
pretend that your reader is lazy, stupid, and mean. He's lazy in that
he doesn't want to figure out what your convoluted sentences are
supposed to mean, and he doesn't want to figure out what your argument
is, if it's not already obvious. He's stupid, so you have to explain
everything you say to him in simple, bite-sized pieces. And he's mean,
so he's not going to read your paper charitably. (For example, if
something you say admits of more than one interpretation, he's going to
assume you meant the less plausible thing.) If you understand the
material you're writing about, and if you aim your paper at such a
reader, you'll probably get an A.
Use plenty of examples and definitions
It is very important to use examples in a philosophy paper. Many of the
claims philosophers make are very abstract and hard to understand, and
examples are the best way to make those claims clearer.
Examples are also useful for explaining the notions that play a central
role in your argument. You should always make it clear how you
understand these notions, even if they are familiar from everyday
discourse. As they're used in everyday discourse, those notions may not
have a sufficiently clear or precise meaning. For instance, suppose
you're writing a paper about abortion, and you want to assert the claim
"A fetus is a person." What do you mean by "a person"? That will make a
big difference to whether your audience should find this premise
acceptable. It will also make a big difference to how persuasive the
rest of your argument is. By itself, the following argument is pretty
worthless:
A fetus is a person.
It's wrong to kill a person.
Therefore, it's wrong to kill a fetus.
For we don't know what the author means by calling a fetus "a person."
On some interpretations of "person," it might be quite obvious that a
fetus is a person; but quite controversial whether it's always wrong to
kill persons, in that sense of "person." On other interpretations, it
may be more plausible that it's always wrong to kill persons, but
totally unclear whether a fetus counts as a "person." So everything
turns here on what the author means by "person." The author should be
explicit about how he is using this notion.
In a philosophy paper, it's okay to use words in ways that are somewhat
different from the ways they're ordinarily used. You just have to make
it clear that you're doing this. For instance, some philosophers use
the word "person" to mean any being which is capable of rational
thought and self-awareness. Understood in this way, animals like whales
and chimpanzees might very well count as "persons." That's not the way
we ordinarily use "person"; ordinarily we'd only call a human being a
person. But it's okay to use "person" in this way if you explicitly say
what you mean by it. And likewise for other words.
Don't vary your vocabulary just for the sake of variety
If you call something "X" at the start of your paper, call it
"X" all the way through. So, for instance, don't start talking
about "Plato's view of the self," and then switch to talking
about "Plato's view of the soul," and then switch to talking
about "Plato's view of the mind." If you mean to be talking
about the same thing in all three cases, then call it by the
same name. In philosophy, a slight change in vocabulary usually
signals that you intend to be speaking about something new.
Using words with precise philosophical meanings
Philosophers give many ordinary-sounding words precise technical
meanings. Consult the handouts on Philosophical Terms and
Methods to make sure you're using these words correctly. Don't
use words that you don't fully understand.
Use technical philosophical terms only where you need them. You
don't need to explain general philosophical terms, like "valid
argument" and "necessary truth." But you should explain any
technical terms you use which bear on the specific topic you're
discussing. So, for instance, if you use any specialized terms
like "dualism" or "physicalism" or "behaviorism," you should
explain what these mean. Likewise if you use technical terms
like "supervenience" and the like. Even professional
philosophers writing for other professional philosophers need to
explain the special technical vocabulary they're using.
Different people sometimes use this special vocabulary in
different ways, so it's important to make sure that you and your
readers are all giving these words the same meaning. Pretend
that your readers have never heard them before.
Presenting and assessing the views of others
If you plan to discuss the views of Philosopher X, begin by figuring
out what his arguments or central assumptions are. See my tips on How
To Read a Philosophy Paper for some help doing this.
Then ask yourself: Are X's arguments good ones? Are his assumptions
clearly stated? Are they plausible? Are they reasonable starting-points
for X's argument, or ought he have provided some independent argument
for them?
Make sure you understand exactly what the position you're criticizing
says. Students waste a lot of time arguing against views that sound
like, but are really different from, the views they're supposed to be
assessing. Remember, philosophy demands a high level of precision. It's
not good enough for you merely to get the general idea of somebody
else's position or argument. You have to get it exactly right. (In this
respect, philosophy is more like a science than the other humanities.)
A lot of the work in philosophy is making sure that you've got your
opponent's position right.
You can assume that your reader is stupid (see above). But don't treat
the philosopher or the views you're discussing as stupid. If they were
stupid, we wouldn't be looking at them. If you can't see anything the
view has going for it, maybe that's because you don't have much
experience thinking and arguing about the view, and so you haven't yet
fully understood why the view's proponents are attracted to it. Try
harder to figure out what's motivating them.
Philosophers sometimes do say outrageous things, but if the view you're
attributing to a philosopher seems to be obviously crazy, then you
should think hard about whether he really does say what you think he
says. Use your imagination. Try to figure out what reasonable position
the philosopher could have had in mind, and direct your arguments
against that.
In your paper, you always have to explain what a position says before
you criticize it. If you don't explain what you take Philosopher X's
view to be, your reader cannot judge whether the criticism you offer of
X is a good criticism, or whether it is simply based on a
misunderstanding or misinterpretation of X's views. So tell the reader
what it is you think X is saying.
Don't try to tell the reader everything you know about X's views,
though. You have to go on to offer your own philosophical contribution,
too. Only summarize those parts of X's views that are directly relevant
to what you're going to go on to do.
Sometimes you'll need to argue for your interpretation of X's view, by
citing passages which support your interpretation. It is permissible
for you to discuss a view you think a philosopher might have held, or
should have held, though you can't find any direct evidence of that
view in the text. When you do this, though, you should explicitly say
so. Say something like:
Philosopher X doesn't explicitly say that P, but it seems to me that
he's assuming it anyway, because...
Quotations
When a passage from a text is particularly useful in supporting
your interpretation of some philosopher's views, it may be
helpful to quote the passage directly. (Be sure to specify where
the passage can be found.) However, direct quotations should be
used sparingly. It is seldom necessary to quote more than a few
sentences. Often it will be more appropriate to paraphrase what
X says, rather than to quote him directly. When you are
paraphrasing what somebody else said, be sure to say so. (And
here too, cite the pages you're referring to.)
Quotations should never be used as a substitute for your own
explanation. And when you do quote an author, you still have to
explain what the quotation says in your own words. If the quoted
passage contains an argument, reconstruct the argument in more
explicit, straightforward terms. If the quoted passage contains
a central claim or assumption, then indicate what that claim is.
You may want to give some examples to illustrate the author's
point. If necessary, you may want to distinguish the author's
claim from other claims with which it might be confused.
Paraphrases
Sometimes when students are trying to explain a philosopher's
view, they'll do it by giving very close paraphrases of the
philosopher's own words. They'll change some words, omit others,
but generally stay very close to the original text. For
instance, Hume begins his Treatise of Human Nature as follows:
All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two
distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions and ideas. The
difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and
liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way
into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter
with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under
this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions,
as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the
faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.
Here's an example of how you don't want to paraphrase:
Hume says all perceptions of the mind are resolved into two kinds,
impressions and ideas. The difference is in how much force and
liveliness they have in our thoughts and consciousness. The
perceptions with the most force and violence are impressions. These
are sensations, passions, and emotions. Ideas are the faint images
of our thinking and reasoning.
There are two main problems with paraphrases of this sort. In
the first place, it's done rather mechanically, so it doesn't
show that the author understands the text. In the second place,
since the author hasn't figured out what the text means well
enough to express it in his own words, there's a danger that his
paraphrase may inadvertently change the meaning of the text. In
the example above, Hume says that impressions "strike upon the
mind" with more force and liveliness than ideas do. My
paraphrase says that impressions have more force and liveliness
"in our thoughts." It's not clear whether these are the same
thing. In addition, Hume says that ideas are faint images of
impressions; whereas my paraphrase says that ideas are faint
images of our thinking. These are not the same. So the author of
the paraphrase appears not to have understood what Hume was
saying in the original passage.
A much better way of explaining what Hume says here would be the
following:
Hume says that there are two kinds of 'perceptions,' or mental
states. He calls these impressions and ideas. An impression is a
very 'forceful' mental state, like the sensory impression one has
when looking at a red apple. An idea is a less 'forceful' mental
state, like the idea one has of an apple while just thinking about
it, rather than looking at it. It is not so clear what Hume means
here by 'forceful.' He might mean...
Anticipate objections
Try to anticipate objections to your view and respond to them. For
instance, if you object to some philosopher's view, don't assume he
would immediately admit defeat. Imagine what his comeback might be. How
would you handle that comeback?
Don't be afraid of mentioning objections to your own thesis. It is
better to bring up an objection yourself than to hope your reader won't
think of it. Explain how you think these objections can be countered or
overcome. Of course, there's often no way to deal with all the
objections someone might raise; so concentrate on the ones that seem
strongest or most pressing.
What happens if you're stuck?
Your paper doesn't always have to provide a definite solution to a
problem, or a straight yes or no answer to a question. Many excellent
philosophy papers don't offer straight yes or no answers. Sometimes
they argue that the question needs to be clarified, or that certain
further questions need to be raised. Sometimes they argue that certain
assumptions of the question need to be challenged. Sometimes they argue
that certain answers to the question are too easy, that is, they won't
work. Hence, if these papers are right, the question will be harder to
answer than we might previously have thought. These are all important
and philosophically valuable results.
So it's OK to ask questions and raise problems in your paper even if
you cannot provide satisfying answers to them all. You can leave some
questions unanswered at the end of the paper. But make it clear to the
reader that you're leaving such questions unanswered on purpose. And
you should say something about how the question might be answered, and
about what makes the question interesting and relevant to the issue at
hand.
If something in a view you're examining is unclear to you, don't gloss
it over. Call attention to the unclarity. Suggest several different
ways of understanding the view. Explain why it's not clear which of
these interpretations is correct.
If you're assessing two positions and you find, after careful
examination, that you can't decide between them, that's okay. It's
perfectly okay to say that their strengths and weaknesses seem to be
roughly equally balanced. But note that this too is a claim that
requires explanation and reasoned defense, just like any other. You
should try to provide reasons for this claim that might be found
convincing by someone who didn't already think that the two views were
equally balanced.
Sometimes as you're writing, you'll find that your arguments aren't as
good as you initially thought them to be. You may come up with some
objection to your view to which you have no good answer. Don't panic.
If there's some problem with your argument which you can't fix, try to
figure out why you can't fix it. It's okay to change your thesis to one
you can defend. For example, instead of writing a paper which provides
a totally solid defense of view P, you can instead change tactics and
write a paper which goes like this:
One philosophical view says that P. This is a plausible view, for
the following reasons...
However, there are some reasons to be doubtful whether P. One of
these reasons is X. X poses a problem for the view that P because...
It is not clear how the defender of P can overcome this objection.
Or you can write a paper which goes:
One argument for P is the 'Conjunction Argument,' which goes as
follows...
At first glance, this is a very appealing argument. However, this
argument is faulty, for the following reasons...
One might try to repair the argument, by...
But these repairs will not work, because...
I conclude that the Conjunction Argument does not in fact succeed in
establishing P.
Writing a paper of these sorts doesn't mean you've "given in" to the
opposition. After all, neither of these papers commits you to the view
that not-P. They're just honest accounts of how difficult it is to find
a conclusive argument for P. P might still be true, for all that.
3. Rewrite, and Keep Rewriting
Now you've written a complete draft of your paper. Set the draft aside
for a day or two.
Then come back to the draft and re-read it. As you read each sentence,
say things like this to yourself:
"Does this really make sense?" "That's totally unclear!" "That
sounds pretentious." "What does that mean?" "What's the connection
between these two sentences?" "Am I just repeating myself here?" and
so on.
Make sure every sentence in your draft does useful work. Get rid of any
which don't. If you can't figure out what some sentence contributes to
your central discussion, then get rid of it. Even if it sounds nice.
You should never introduce any points in your paper unless they're
important to your main argument, and you have the room to really
explain them.
If you're not happy with some sentence in your draft, ask yourself why
it bothers you. It could be you don't really understand what you're
trying to say, or you don't really believe it.
Make sure your sentences say exactly what you want them to say. For
example, suppose you write "Abortion is the same thing as murder." Is
that what you really mean? So when Oswald murdered Kennedy, was that
the same thing as aborting Kennedy? Or do you mean something different?
Perhaps you mean that abortion is a form of murder. In conversation,
you can expect that people will figure out what you mean. But you
shouldn't write this way. Even if your TA is able to figure out what
you mean, it's bad writing. In philosophical prose, you have to be sure
to say exactly what you mean.
Also pay attention to the structure of your draft. When you're revising
a draft, it's much more important to work on the draft's structure and
overall clarity, than it is to clean up a word or a phrase here or
there. Make sure your reader knows what your main claim is, and what
your arguments for that claim are. Make sure that your reader can tell
what the point of every paragraph is. It's not enough that you know
what their point is. It has to be obvious to your reader, even to a
lazy, stupid, and mean reader.
If you can, show your draft to your friends or to other students in the
class, and get their comments and advice. I encourage you to do this.
Do your friends understand your main point? Are parts of your draft
unclear or confusing to them? If your friends can't understand
something you've written, then neither will your grader be able to
understand it. Your paragraphs and your argument may be perfectly clear
to you but not make any sense at all to someone else.
Another good way to check your draft is to read it out loud. This will
help you tell whether it all makes sense. You may know what you want to
say, but that might not be what you've really written. Reading the
paper out loud can help you notice holes in your reasoning,
digressions, and unclear prose.
You should count on writing many drafts of your paper. At least 3 or
4!! Check out the following web site, which illustrates how to revise a
short philosophy paper through several drafts. Notice how much the
paper improves with each revision:
* Writing tutor for Introductory Philosophy Courses
.
__________________________________________________________________
Minor Points
Beginning your paper
Don't begin with a sentence like "Down through the ages, mankind has
pondered the problem of..." There's no need to warm up to your topic.
You should get right to the point, with the first sentence.
Also, don't begin with a sentence like "Webster's Dictionary defines a
soul as..." Dictionaries aren't good philosophical authorities. They
record the way words are used in everyday discourse. Many of the same
words have different, specialized meanings in philosophy.
Grammar
* It's OK to end a sentence with a preposition. It's also OK to split
an infinitive, if you need to. (Sometimes the easiest way to say
what you mean is by splitting an infinitive. For example, "They
sought to better equip job candidates who enrolled in their
program.") Efforts to avoid these often end up just confusing your
prose.
* Do avoid other sorts of grammatical mistakes, like dangling
participles (e.g., "Hurt by her fall, the tree fell right on Mary's
leg before she could get out of the way"), and the like.
* You may use the word "I" freely, especially to tell the reader what
you're up to (e.g., "I've just explained why... Now I'm going to
consider an argument that...").
* Don't worry about using the verb "is" or "to be" too much. In a
philosophy paper, it's OK to use this verb as much as you need to.
Secondary readings
For most classes, I will put some articles and books on reserve in
Bobst Library for additional reading. These are optional, and are for
your independent study.
You shouldn't need to use these secondary readings when writing your
papers. The point of the papers is to teach you how to analyze a
philosophical argument, and present your own arguments for or against
some conclusion. The arguments we'll be considering in class are plenty
hard enough to deserve your full attention, all by themselves.
Can you write your paper as a dialogue or story?
No. Done well, these forms of philosophical writing can be very
effective. That's why we read some dialogues and stories in Philosophy
3. But these forms of philosophical writing are extremely difficult to
do well. They tempt the author to be imprecise and to use unclear
metaphors. You need to master ordinary philosophical writing before you
can do a good job with these more difficult forms.
Mechanics
Aim to make your papers less than or equal to the assigned word limit.
Longer papers are typically too ambitious, or repetitious, or full of
digressions. Your grade will suffer if your paper has these defects. So
it's important to ask yourself: What are the most important things you
have to say? What can be left out?
But neither should your papers be too short! Don't cut off an argument
abruptly. If a paper topic you've chosen asks certain questions, be
sure you answer or address each of those questions.
Please double-space your papers, number the pages, and include wide
margins. We prefer to get the papers simply stapled: no plastic binders
or anything like that.
Include your name on the paper. And don't turn in your only copy!
(These things should be obvious, but apparently they're not.)
__________________________________________________________________
How You'll Be Graded
You'll be graded on three basic criteria:
1. How well do you understand the issues you're writing about?
2. How good are the arguments you offer?
3. Is your writing clear and well-organized?
We do not judge your paper by whether we agree with its conclusion. In
fact, we may not agree amongst ourselves about what the correct
conclusion is. But we will have no trouble agreeing about whether you
do a good job arguing for your conclusion.
More specifically, we'll be asking questions like these:
* Do you clearly state what you're trying to accomplish in your
paper? Is it obvious to the reader what your main thesis is?
* Do you offer supporting arguments for the claims you make? Is it
obvious to the reader what these arguments are?
* Is the structure of your paper clear? For instance, is it clear
what parts of your paper are expository, and what parts are your
own positive contribution?
* Is your prose simple, easy to read, and easy to understand?
* Do you illustrate your claims with good examples? Do you explain
your central notions? Do you say exactly what you mean?
* Do you present other philosophers' views accurately and charitably?
Comment: The comments I find myself making on students' philosophy
papers most often are these:
* "Explain this claim" or "What do you mean by this?" or "I don't
understand what you're saying here"
* "This passage is unclear (or awkward, or otherwise hard to read)"
"Too complicated" "Too hard to follow" "Simplify"
* "Why do you think this?" "This needs more support" "Why should we
believe this?" "Explain why this is a reason to believe P" "Explain
why this follows from what you said before"
* "Not really relevant"
* "Give an example?"
Try to anticipate these comments and avoid the need for them!
Your paper should do some philosophical work
A kind of complaint that is common in undergraduate philosophy papers
goes like this:
Philosopher X assumes A and argues from there to B. B seems
unattractive to me. Philosopher X just assumes A and doesn't give
any argument for it. I don't think A is true. So I can just reject A
and thereby avoid B.
This line of thought may very well be correct. And the student may very
well be right that Philosopher X should have given more argument for A.
But the student hasn't really philosophically engaged with Philosopher
X's view in an interesting way. He hasn't really done much
philosophical work. It was clear from the outset that Philosopher X was
assuming A, and that if you don't want to make that assumption, you
don't need to accept X's conclusion. If this is all you do in your
paper, it won't be a strong paper and it will get a mediocre grade,
even if it's well-written.
Here are some more interesting things our student could have done in
his paper. He could have argued that B doesn't really follow from A,
after all. Or he could have presented reasons for thinking that A is
false. Or he could have argued that assuming A is an illegitimate move
to make in a debate about whether B is true. Or something else of that
sort. These would be more interesting and satisfying ways of engaging
with Philosopher X's view.
Responding to comments from me or your TA
When you have the opportunity to rewrite a graded paper, keep the
following points in mind.
Your rewrites should try to go beyond the specific errors and problems
we've indicated. If you got below an A-, then your draft was generally
difficult to read, it was difficult to see what your argument was and
what the structure of your paper was supposed to be, and so on. You can
only correct these sorts of failings by rewriting your paper from
scratch. (Start with a new, empty window in your word processor.) Use
your draft and the comments you received on it to construct a new
outline, and write from that.
Keep in mind that when I or your TA grade a rewrite, we may sometimes
notice weaknesses in unchanged parts of your paper that we missed the
first time around. Or perhaps those weaknesses will have affected our
overall impression of the paper, and we just didn't offer any specific
recommendation about fixing them. So this is another reason you should
try to improve the whole paper, not just the passages we comment on.
It is possible to improve a paper without improving it enough to raise
it to the next grade level. Sometimes that happens. But I hope you'll
all do better than that.
Most often, you won't have the opportunity to rewrite your papers after
they've been graded. So you need to teach yourself to write a draft,
scrutinize the draft, and revise and rewrite your paper before turning
it in to be graded.
__________________________________________________________________
Acknowledgements
I don't want to claim undue credit for this work. A lot of the
suggestions here derive from writing handouts that friends and
colleagues lent me. (Alison Simmons and Justin Broackes deserve special
thanks.) Also, I've browsed some other writing guidelines on the web,
and occasionally incorporated advice I thought my students would find
useful. Peter Horban's site deserves special mention. Thanks to
Professor Horban for allowing me to incorporate some of his suggestions
here.
Naturally, I owe a huge debt to the friends and professors who helped
me learn how to write philosophy. I'm sure they had a hard time of it.
If you're a teacher and you think your own students would find this web
site useful, you are free to point them here (or to distribute printed
copies). It's all in the public good.
Full licensing details are here.
__________________________________________________________________
Created and maintained by jim.pryor@nyu.edu
This work licensed under a Creative Commons License
URL: http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html
Updated: 6-Sep-12 11:35 AM
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History of writing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Writing systems
* History
* Grapheme
* List of writing systems
Types
* Featural alphabet
* Alphabet
* Abjad
* Abugida
* Syllabary
* Logography
* Shorthand
Related topics
* Pictogram
* Ideogram
* v
* t
* e
The history of writing records the development of expressing language
by letters or other marks.^[1] In the history of how systems of
representation of language through graphic means have evolved in
different human civilizations, more complete writing systems were
preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic
symbol. True writing, in which the entire content of a linguistic
utterance is encoded so that another reader can reconstruct, with a
fair degree of accuracy, the exact utterance written down, is a later
development, and is distinguished from proto-writing which typically
avoids encoding grammatical words and affixes, making it difficult or
impossible to confidently reconstruct the exact meaning intended by the
writer unless a great deal of context is already known in advance. One
of the earliest forms of written expression is cuneiform.^[2]
Contents
* 1 Inventions of writing
* 2 Writing systems
* 3 Recorded history
+ 3.1 Developmental stages
+ 3.2 Literature and writing
* 4 Locations and timeframes
+ 4.1 Proto-writing
+ 4.2 Bronze Age writing
o 4.2.1 Cuneiform script
o 4.2.2 Egyptian hieroglyphs
o 4.2.3 Elamite scripts
o 4.2.4 Indus scripts
o 4.2.5 Anatolian hieroglyphs
o 4.2.6 Cretan and Greek scripts
o 4.2.7 Early Semitic alphabets
o 4.2.8 Chinese writing
o 4.2.9 Mesoamerica
+ 4.3 Iron Age writing
+ 4.4 Writing in the Greco-Roman civilizations
+ 4.5 Writing during the Middle Ages
+ 4.6 Renaissance and the modern era
* 5 Materials of writing
* 6 See also
* 7 Footnotes
* 8 Notes
* 9 References
* 10 Further reading
* 11 External links
[edit] Inventions of writing
Sumer, an ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia, is believed to
be the place where written language was invented around 3200 BCE
Writing numbers for record keeping began long before the writing of
language. See History of writing ancient numbers for how the writing of
numbers began.
It is generally agreed that true writing of language (not only numbers)
was invented independently in at least two places: Mesopotamia
(specifically, ancient Sumer) around 3200 BCE and Mesoamerica around
600 BCE. Writing used in an inscription discovered in Jiroft, Iran came
into existence shortly after that of Mesopotamia; carbon-14 tests
conducted on the layers in which the Jiroft inscription was discovered
have dated it to around 2500 BCE.^[citation needed] Although such tests
have not yet been carried out on Mesopotamian inscriptions,
archaeologists believe that Mesopotamia's script goes back to 2600-2700
BCE at most.^[citation needed] Twelve Mesoamerican scripts are known,
the oldest being from the Olmec or Zapotec of Mexico.
It is debated whether writing were developed completely independently
in Egypt around 3200 BCE and China around 1200 BCE, or whether the
appearance of writing in either or both places were due to cultural
diffusion (i.e. the concept of representing language using writing, if
not the specifics of how such a system worked, was brought by traders
from an already-literate civilization).
Chinese characters are most probably an independent invention, because
there is no evidence of contact between China and the literate
civilizations of the Near East,^[citation needed] and because of the
distinct differences between the Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to
logography and phonetic representation. Egyptian script is dissimilar
from Mesopotamian cuneiform, but similarities in concepts and in
earliest attestation suggest that the idea of writing may have come to
Egypt from Mesopotamia.^[3] In 1999, Archaeology Magazine reported that
the earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to 3400 BCE which "...challenge
the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols
representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into
more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia."^[4]
Similar debate surrounds the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus
Valley civilization in Ancient India 2200 BCE, with the additional
provisos that the script is still undeciphered and that there is debate
over whether the script is true writing at all, or instead some kind of
proto-writing or non-linguistic sign system.
An additional possibility is the undeciphered Rongorongo script of
Easter Island. However, it is debated whether this system is true
writing, and if it is, whether it is yet another case of cultural
diffusion of writing. The oldest example is from 1851, 139 years after
their first contact with Europeans. The most probable explanation is
that the script was inspired by Spain's written annexation proclamation
in 1770.^[5]
Various other known cases of cultural diffusion of writing exist, where
the general concept of writing was transmitted from one culture to
another but the specifics of the system were independently developed.
Recent examples are the Cherokee syllabary, invented by Sequoyah, and
the Pahawh Hmong system for writing the Hmong language.
[edit] Writing systems
Main article: Writing system
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic
communication systems in that one must usually understand something of
the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. By contrast,
other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting,
maps, and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken
language. Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded
by many as an innate and defining condition of mankind (see Origin of
language). However the development of writing systems, and the process
by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication
has been sporadic, uneven and slow. Once established, writing systems
on the whole change more slowly than their spoken counterparts, and
often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in
the spoken language. The great benefit of writing systems is their
ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a
language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of
formulation.
[edit] Recorded history
Main articles: Recorded history and early literature
Human history
and prehistory
â before Homo (Pliocene)
Three-age system prehistory
Stone Age
Lower Paleolithic
Homo, Homo erectus
Middle Paleolithic
early Homo sapiens
Upper Paleolithic
behavioral modernity
Neolithic
civilization
Bronze Age
Near East · India · Europe · China · Korea
Iron Age
Bronze Age collapse · Ancient Near East · India · Europe ·
China · Japan · Korea · Nigeria
Recorded History
Ancient history
Earliest records
Middle Ages
Early · High · Late
Modern history
Early · Late · Contemporary
See also: Modernity and Futurology
âFuture
* v
* t
* e
Scholars make a reasonable distinction between prehistory and history
of early writing,^[6] but have disagreed concerning when prehistory
becomes history and when proto-writing became "true writing". The
definition is largely subjective.^[7] Writing, in its most general
terms, is a method of recording information and is composed of
glyphs^[8] (also known as graphemes).
The emergence of writing in a given area is usually followed by several
centuries of fragmentary inscriptions. With the presence of coherent
texts (from the various writing systems and the systems' associated
literature), historians mark the "historicity" of that culture.^[6]
The invention of writing was not a one-time event, but a long evolution
preceded by the appearance of symbols, possibly first for cultic
purposes. Canadian researchers from the University of Victoria suggest
that symbolism was used by cave painters of the Neolithic Age. "...von
Petzinger and Nowell were surprised by the clear patterning of the
symbols across space and time â some of which remained continually in
use for over 20,000 years. The 26 specific signs may provide the first
glimmers of proof that a graphic code was being used by these ancient
humans shortly after their arrival in Europe from Africa, or they may
have even brought this practice with them. If correct, these findings
will contribute to the growing body of evidence that the "creative
explosion" occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than scholars
once thought.",^[9]^[10]
[edit] Developmental stages
A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a general
series of developmental stages:^[11]
* Picture writing system: glyphs directly represent objects and ideas
or objective and ideational situations. In connection with this the
following substages may be distinguished:
1. The mnemonic: glyphs primarily a reminder;
2. The pictographic (pictography): glyphs represent directly an
object or an objective situation such as (A) chronological,
(B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and
names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H)
biographical;
3. The ideographic (ideography): glyphs represent directly an
idea or an ideational situation.
* Transitional system: glyphs refer not only to the object or idea
which it represents but to its name as well.
* Phonetic system: glyphs refer to sounds or spoken symbols
irrespective of their meanings. This resolves itself into the
following substages:
1. The verbal: glyph (logogram) represents a whole word;
2. The syllabic: glyph represent a syllable;
3. The alphabetic: glyph represent an elementary sound.
The best known picture writing system of ideographic and/or early
mnemonic symbols are:
* Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, ca. 6600 BC
* VinÄa signs (TÄrtÄria tablets), ca. 5300 BC^[12]
* Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC
In the Old World, true writing systems developed from neolithic writing
in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC). The Sumerian archaic
(pre-cuneiform) writing and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally
considered the earliest true writing systems, both emerging out of
their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400â3200 BC with
earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC.
[edit] Literature and writing
Literature and writing, though obviously connected, are not synonymous.
The very first writings from ancient Sumer by any reasonable definition
do not constitute literature â the same is true of some of the early
Egyptian hieroglyphics or the thousands of logs from ancient Chinese
regimes. The history of literature begins with the history of writing
and the notion of "literature" has different meanings depending on who
is using it. Scholars have disagreed concerning when written
record-keeping became more like literature than anything else and is
largely subjective. It could be applied broadly to mean any symbolic
record, encompassing everything from images and sculptures to letters.
The oldest literary texts that have come down to us date to a full
millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium
BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and
Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively.
In the early literate societies, as much as 600 years passed from the
first inscriptions to the first coherent textual sources (ca. 3200 to
2600 BC).
[edit] Locations and timeframes
[edit] Proto-writing
Main article: Proto-writing
Further information: Neolithic signs in China and prehistoric numerals
See also: History of communication
Example of the Jiahu symbols, a writing-like markings, found on
tortoise shells dated around 6000 BC.^[13]
The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age were not a sudden
invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions
of symbol systems that cannot be classified as writing proper, but have
many characteristics strikingly similar to writing. These systems may
be described as proto-writing. They used ideographic and/or early
mnemonic symbols to convey information yet were probably devoid of
direct linguistic content. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic
period, as early as the 7th millennium BC.
The VinÄa signs show an evolution of simple symbols beginning in the
7th millennium BCE, gradually increasing in complexity throughout the
6th millennium and culminating in the TÄrtÄria tablets of ca. 5300
BC^[12] with their rows of symbols carefully aligned, evoking the
impression of a "text".
The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium is similar. The
hieroglyphic scripts of the Ancient Near East (Egyptian, Sumerian
proto-Cuneiform and Cretan) seamlessly emerge from such symbol systems,
so that it is difficult to say at what point precisely writing emerges
from proto-writing. Adding to this difficulty is the fact that very
little is known about the symbols' meanings.
In 2003, tortoise shells were found in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at
Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the
7th millennium BC. According to some archaeologists, the symbols carved
on the shells had similarities to the late 2nd millennium BC oracle
bone script.^[14] Others have dismissed this claim as insufficiently
substantiated, claiming that simple geometric designs such as those
found on the Jiahu shells cannot be linked to early writing.^[15]
Even after the Neolithic, several cultures have gone through a period
of using systems of proto-writing as an intermediate stage before the
adoption of writing proper. The "Slavic runes" (7th/8th century)
mentioned by a few medieval authors may have been such a system. The
Quipu of the Incas (15th century), sometimes called "talking knots",
may have been of a similar nature. Another example is the system of
pictographs invented by Uyaquk before the development of the Yugtun
syllabary (ca. 1900).
[edit] Bronze Age writing
Further information: History of the alphabet
Writing emerged in a variety of different cultures in the Bronze age.
Examples include the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians, Egyptian
hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, and the Olmec
script of Mesoamerica. The Chinese script likely developed
independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around 1600 BC. The
pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others
Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had
independent origins. It is thought that the first true alphabetic
writing was developed around 2000 BC for Semitic workers in the Sinai
by giving mostly Egyptian hieratic glyphs Semitic values(see History of
the alphabet Proto-Sinaitic alphabet). The Ge'ez writing system of
Ethiopia is considered Semitic. It is likely to be of semi-independent
origin, having roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system.^[16]
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. In the case of Italy, about 500 years passed from the
early Old Italic alphabet to Plautus (750 to 250 BC), and in the case
of the Germanic peoples, the corresponding time span is again similar,
from the first Elder Futhark inscriptions to early texts like the
Abrogans (ca. 200 to 750 CE).
[edit] Cuneiform script
Middle Babylonian legal tablet from Alalah in its envelope
Main article: Cuneiform script
The original Sumerian writing system derives from a system of clay
tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium
BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a
round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for
recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic
writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted.
Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing were gradually replaced around
2700-2500 BC by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term
cuneiform), at first only for logograms, but developed to include
phonetic elements by the 29th century BC. About 2600 BC cuneiform began
to represent syllables of the Sumerian language. Finally, cuneiform
writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms,
syllables, and numbers. From the 26th century BC, this script was
adapted to the Akkadian language, and from there to others such as
Hurrian, and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing
system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.
[edit] Egyptian hieroglyphs
Main article: Egyptian hieroglyphs
Writing was very important in maintaining the Egyptian empire, and
literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only
people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train to become
scribes, in the service of temple, pharisaic, and military authorities.
The hieroglyph system was always difficult to learn, but in later
centuries may have been intentionally made even more difficult, as this
preserved the scribes' position.^[citation needed]
Various scholars believe that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence
a little after Sumerian script, and ... probably [were]... invented
under the influence of the latter ...",^[17] although it is pointed out
and held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy"
and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent
development of writing in Egypt..."^[18] (See further Egyptian
hieroglyphs).
[edit] Elamite scripts
Main article: Proto-Elamite script
The undeciphered Proto-Elamite script emerges from as early as 3200 BC
and evolves into Linear Elamite by the later 3rd millennium, which is
then replaced by Elamite Cuneiform adopted from Akkadian.
[edit] Indus scripts
Main article: Indus script
Sequence of ten Indus signs discovered near the northern gate of the
Indus site Dholavira
The Middle Bronze Age Indus script which dates back to the early
Harappan phase of around 3000 BC in ancient north western India and
what is now Pakistan, has not yet been deciphered.^[19] It is unclear
whether it should be considered an example of proto-writing (a system
of symbols or similar), or if it is actual writing of the
logographic-syllabic type of the other Bronze Age writing systems.
Mortimer Wheeler recognises the style of writing as boustrophedon,
where "this stability suggests a precarious maturity".
[edit] Anatolian hieroglyphs
Main article: Anatolian hieroglyphs
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous hieroglyphic script native to
western Anatolia first appearing on Luwian royal seals from the 14th
century BC, used to record the Hieroglyphic Luwian language.
[edit] Cretan and Greek scripts
Main articles: Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B
Cretan hieroglyphs are found on artifacts of Crete (early-to-mid-2nd
millennium BC, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at
the earliest). Linear B, the writing system of the Mycenaean
Greeks,^[20] has been deciphered while Linear A has yet to be
deciphered. The sequence and the geographical spread of the three
overlapping, but distinct, writing systems can be summarized as
follows:^[20]
Writing system Geographical area Time span^[A 1]
Cretan Hieroglyphic Crete ca. 1625â1500 BC
Linear A Aegean islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), and Greek
mainland (Laconia) ca. 18th centuryâ1450 BC
Linear B Crete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns)
ca. 1375â1200 BC
[edit] Early Semitic alphabets
Main article: Middle Bronze Age alphabets
The first pure alphabets (properly, "abjads", mapping single symbols to
single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol) emerged
around 1800 BC in Ancient Egypt, as a representation of language
developed by Semitic workers in Egypt, but by then alphabetic
principles had a slight possibility of being inculcated into Egyptian
hieroglyphs for upwards of a millennium. These early abjads remained of
marginal importance for several centuries, and it is only towards the
end of the Bronze Age that the Proto-Sinaitic script splits into the
Proto-Canaanite alphabet (ca. 1400 BC) Byblos syllabary and the South
Arabian alphabet (ca. 1200 BC). The Proto-Canaanite was probably
somehow influenced by the undeciphered Byblos syllabary and in turn
inspired the Ugaritic alphabet (ca. 1300 BC).
[edit] Chinese writing
Main articles: Chinese writing and Chinese characters
In China, historians have learned much about the early Chinese
dynasties from the written documents left behind. From the Shang
Dynasty, most of this writing has survived on bones or on bronze.
Markings on turtle shells, or jiaguwen, are attested from the late
Shang (1200â1050 BCE).^[21]^[22]^[23] The writings from the Shang
Dynasty are the direct ancestor of modern Chinese characters used
throughout East Asia (China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam).
[edit] Mesoamerica
Main article: Mesoamerican writing systems
A stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing was discovered in the Mexican
state of Veracruz, and is an example of the oldest script in the
Western Hemisphere preceding the oldest Zapotec writing dated to about
500 BC.^[24]^[25]^[26]
Of several pre-Columbian scripts in Mesoamerica, the one that appears
to have been best developed, and fully deciphered, is the Maya script.
The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd
century BC, and writing was in continuous use until shortly after the
arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century AD. Maya
writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs,
somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing.
[edit] Iron Age writing
Main article: History of the alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet is simply the Proto-Canaanite alphabet as it
was continued into the Iron Age (conventionally taken from a cut-off
date of 1050 BC). This alphabet gave rise to the Aramaic and Greek
alphabets. These in turn led to the writing systems used throughout
regions ranging from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. For its part
the Greek alphabet introduced for the first time explicit symbols for
vowel sounds.^[27] The Greek and Latin alphabets in the early centuries
of the Common Era gave rise to several European scripts such as the
Runes and the Gothic and Cyrillic alphabets while the Aramaic alphabet
evolved into the Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic abjads and the South Arabian
alphabet gave rise to the Ge'ez abugida. The Brahmic family of India is
believed by some scholars to have derived from the Aramaic alphabet as
well.^[28]
[edit] Writing in the Greco-Roman civilizations
Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum
of Athens
In history of the Greek alphabet, the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician
alphabet and adapted it to their own language.^[29] The letters of the
Greek alphabet are the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and
both alphabets are arranged in the same order.^[29] The adapter of the
Phoenician system also added three letters to the end of the series,
called the "supplementals." Several varieties of the Greek alphabet
developed. One, known as Western Greek or Chalcidian, was used west of
Athens and in southern Italy. The other variation, known as Eastern
Greek, was used in present-day Turkey and by the Athenians, and
eventually the rest of the world that spoke Greek adopted this
variation. After first writing right to left, the Greeks eventually
chose to write from left to right, unlike the Phoenicians who wrote
from right to left. Greek is in turn the source for all the modern
scripts of Europe.
The most widespread descendent of Greek is the Latin script, named for
the Latins, a central Italian people who came to dominate Europe with
the rise of Rome. The Romans learned writing in about the 5th century
BCE from the Etruscan civilization, who used one of a number of Italic
scripts derived from the western Greeks. Due to the cultural dominance
of the Roman empire, the other Italic scripts have not survived in any
great quantity, and the Etruscan language is mostly lost.
The Italic scripts also inspired the runes in which English was first
written. English writing was uncommon, however, until the 6th century
CE, when the Latin language and its writing system were brought to
Britain by Augustine of Canterbury together with the Christian
religion. The Saxon rulers quickly adapted the script for their own
language, producing one of the earliest surviving corpora of European
literature in a language other than Greek or Latin.
[edit] Writing during the Middle Ages
With the collapse of the Roman authority in Western Europe, the
literary development became largely confined to the Eastern Roman
Empire and the Persian Empire. Latin, never one of the primary literary
languages, rapidly declined in importance (except within the Church of
Rome). The primary literary languages were Greek and Persian, though
other languages such as Syriac and Coptic were important too.
The rise of Islam in the 7th century led to the rapid rise of Arabic as
a major literary language in the region. Arabic and Persian quickly
began to overshadow Greek's role as a language of scholarship. Arabic
script was adopted as the primary script of the Persian language and
the Turkish language. This script also heavily influenced the
development of the cursive scripts of Greek, the Slavic languages,
Latin, and other languages. The Arabic language also served to spread
the HinduâArabic numeral system throughout Europe.^[citation needed] By
the beginning of the second millennium the city of Cordoba in modern
Spain, had become one of the foremost intellectual centers of the world
and contained the world's largest library at the time.^[30] Its
position as a crossroads between the Islamic and Western Christian
worlds helped fuel intellectual development and written communication
between both cultures.
[edit] Renaissance and the modern era
By the 14th century a rebirth, or renaissance, had emerged in Western
Europe leading to a temporary revival of the importance of Greek, and a
slow revival of Latin as a significant literary language. Charlemagne,
for his part, had helped introduce standardization and reform of
written Latin in the 11th century, steps that later enabled this
renaissance.^[31] A similar though smaller emergence occurred in
Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. At the same time Arabic and
Persian began a slow decline in importance as the Islamic Golden Age
ended. The revival of literary development in Western Europe led to
many innovations in the Latin alphabet and the diversification of the
alphabet to codify the phonologies of the various languages.
The nature of writing has been constantly evolving, particularly due to
the development of new technologies over the centuries. The pen, the
printing press, the computer and the mobile phone are all technological
developments which have altered what is written, and the medium through
which the written word is produced. Particularly with the advent of
digital technologies, namely the computer and the mobile phone,
characters can be formed by the press of a button, rather than making
the physical motion with the hand.
The nature of the written word had evolved over time to make way for an
informal, colloquial written style, where an everyday conversation can
occur through writing rather than speaking. Written communication can
also be delivered with minimal time delay (e-mail, SMS), and in some
cases, with an imperceptible time delay (instant messaging). Socially,
writing is seen as an authoritative means of communication, from legal
documentation, law and the media all produced through the medium. The
growth of multimedia literacy can be seen as the first steps toward a
postliterate society.
[edit] Materials of writing
Main article: Writing material
There is no very definite statement as to the material which was in
most common use for the purposes of writing at start of the early
writing systems.^[32] In all ages it has been customary to engrave on
stone or metal, or other durable material, with the view of securing
the permanency of the record; and accordingly, in the very commencement
of the national history of Israel, it is read of the two tables of the
law written in stone, and of a subsequent writing of the law on stone.
In the latter case there is this peculiarity, that plaster (sic, lime
or gypsum) was used along with stone, a combination of materials which
is illustrated by comparison of the practice of the Egyptian engravers,
who, having first carefully smoothed the stone, filled up the faulty
places with gypsum or cement, in order to obtain a perfectly uniform
surface on which to execute their engravings.^[32] Metals, such as
stamped coins, are mentioned as a material of writing; they include
lead,^[33] brass, and gold. To the engraving of gems there is reference
also, such as with seals or signets.^[32]
The common materials of writing were the tablet and the roll, the
former probably having a Chaldean origin, the latter an Egyptian. The
tablets of the Chaldeans are among the most remarkable of their
remains. There are small pieces of clay, somewhat rudely shaped into a
form resembling a pillow, and thickly inscribed with cuneiform
characters.^[34] Similar use has been seen in hollow cylinders, or
prisms of six or eight sides, formed of fine terra cotta, sometimes
glazed, on which the characters were traced with a small stylus, in
some specimens so minutely as to be capable of decipherment only with
the aid of a magnifying-glass.^[32]
In Egypt the principal writing material was quite of a different sort.
Wooden tablets are indeed found pictured on the monuments; but the
material which was in common use, even from very ancient times, was the
papyrus. This reed, found chiefly in Lower Egypt, had various economic
means for writing, the pith was taken out, and divided by a pointed
instrument into the thin pieces of which it is composed; it was then
flattened by pressure, and the strips glued together, other strips
being placed at right angles to them, so that a roll of any length
might be manufactured. Writing seems to have become more widespread
with the invention of papyrus in Egypt. That this material was in use
in Egypt from a very early period is evidenced by still existing
papyrus of the earliest Theban dynasties. As the papyrus, being in
great demand, and exported to all parts of the world, became very
costly, other materials were often used instead of it, among which is
mentioned leather, a few leather mills of an early period having been
found in the tombs.^[32] Parchment, using sheepskins left after the
wool was removed for cloth, was sometimes cheaper than papyrus, which
had to be imported outside Egypt. With the invention of wood-pulp
paper, the cost of writing material began a steady decline.
[edit] See also
Main
Phonetics, Palaeography, logograms, logographic, VinÄa signs,
Asemic writing
General
Alphabet, Palaeography, Inscriptions, Book, Manuscript,
Shorthand, Latin alphabet, writing system, ogham, Indus script,
Mixtec, uncials, hanja, Zapotec, kanji, Aurignacian, Chinese
characters, Ugarit, katakana, Acheulean, Ethnoarchaeology,
Hoabinhian, Gravettian, Oldowan, Uruk, Etruscan, Cretan
hieroglyphs, Nabataean, Luwian, Olmec, Busra, Tamil, Kannada
Other
History of art (Ancient art), Oral literature, History of
developmental dyslexia
[edit] Footnotes
1. ^ Peter T. Daniels, "The Study of Writing Systems", in The World's
Writing Systems, ed. Bright and Daniels, p.3
2. ^ Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of
Babylon, New York, St. Martin's Press (2003) ISBN 0-312-33002-2
3. ^ Peter T. Daniels, "The First Civilizations", in The World's
Writing Systems, ed. Bright and Daniels, p.24
4. ^ Mitchell, Larkin. "Earliest Egyptian Glyphs". Archaeology.
Archaeological Institute of America.
http://www.archaeology.org/9903/newsbriefs/egypt.html. Retrieved 29
February 2012.
5. ^ Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, page 231
6. ^ ^a ^b Shotwell, James Thomson. An Introduction to the History of
History. Records of civilization, sources and studies. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1922.
7. ^ Smail, Daniel Lord. On Deep History and the Brain. An Ahmanson
foundation book in the humanities. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2008.
8. ^ Bricker, Victoria Reifler, and Patricia A. Andrews. Epigraphy.
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, v. 5.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
9. ^ New Analysis Of "Cave Signs" Shows Prehistoric Language Use
10. ^ [Geometric Signs â A New Understanding
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/geometric_signs/geometric_signs.p
hp]
11. ^ Smith (1922).
12. ^ ^a ^b Haarmann, Harald: "Geschichte der Schrift", C.H. Beck,
2002, ISBN 3-406-47998-7, p. 20
13. ^ Helen R. Pilcher 'Earliest handwriting found? Chinese relics hint
at Neolithic rituals', Nature (30 April 2003),
doi:10.1038/news030428-7 "Symbols carved into tortoise shells more
than 8,000 years ago [...] unearthed at a mass-burial site at Jiahu
in the Henan Province of western China". Li, X., Harbottle, G.,
Zhang, J. & Wang, C. 'The earliest writing? Sign use in the seventh
millennium BC at Jiahu, Henan Province, China'. Antiquity, 77, 31 -
44, (2003).
14. ^ "Archaeologists Rewrite History". China Daily. 12 June 2003.
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Jun/66806.htm.
15. ^ Houston, Stephen D. (2004). The First Writing: Script Invention
as History and Process. Cambridge University Press. pp. 245â6.
ISBN 978-0-521-83861-0.
16. ^ "Meroitic Writing System". Library.cornell.edu. 2004-04-04.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Meroitic.ht
ml. Retrieved 2010-01-31.
17. ^ Geoffrey Sampson, Writing Systems: a Linguistic Introduction,
Stanford University Press, 1990, p. 78.
18. ^ Simson Najovits, Egypt, Trunk of the Tree: A Modern Survey of an
Ancient Land, Algora Publishing, 2004, pp. 55â56.
19. ^ Whitehouse, David (1999) 'Earliest writing' found BBC
20. ^ ^a ^b Olivier 1986, pp. 377f.
21. ^ William G. Boltz, Early Chinese Writing, World Archaeology, Vol.
17, No. 3, Early Writing Systems. (Feb., 1986), pp. 420â436 (436).
22. ^ David N. Keightley, "Art, Ancestors, and the Origins of Writing
in China", Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New
Erudition. (Autumn, 1996), pp.68â95 (68).
23. ^ John DeFrancis: Visible Speech. The Diverse Oneness of Writing
Systems: Chinese
24. ^ "Writing May Be Oldest in Western Hemisphere.". New York Times.
2006-09-15.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/science/15writing.html. Retrieved
2008-03-30. "A stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously
unknown to scholars has been found in the Mexican state of
Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest
script ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere."
25. ^ "'Oldest' New World writing found". BBC. 2006-09-14.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5347080.stm. Retrieved
2008-03-30. "Ancient civilisations in Mexico developed a writing
system as early as 900 BC, new evidence suggests."
26. ^ "Oldest Writing in the New World". Science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5793/1610.
Retrieved 2008-03-30. "A block with a hitherto unknown system of
writing has been found in the Olmec heartland of Veracruz, Mexico.
Stylistic and other dating of the block places it in the early
first millennium before the common era, the oldest writing in the
New World, with features that firmly assign this pivotal
development to the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica."
27. ^ Millard 1986, p. 396
28. ^ Salomon, Richard (1996). "Brahmi and Kharoshthi". The World's
Writing Systems (Oxford University Press). ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
29. ^ ^a ^b McCarter, P. Kyle. "The Early Diffusion of the Alphabet",
The Biblical Archaeologist 37, No. 3 (Sep., 1974): 54-68. page 62.
30. ^ Bury, J.B.. The Cambridge Medieval History volumes 1-5. p. 1215.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9lHeh36S8ooC.
31. ^ Johnston, Ruth A. (2011). All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of
the Medieval World. Greenwood. p. 12.
http://books.google.com/books?id=yPcIuJ5TNxMC.
32. ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e McClintock, J., & Strong, J. (1885). Cyclopedia of
Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature: Supplement.
New York: Harper. Pages 990â997.
33. ^ though whether to writing on lead, or filling up the hollow of
the letters with lead, is not certain.
34. ^ These documents have been in general enveloped, after they were
baked, in a cover of moist clay, upon which their contents have
been again inscribed, so as to present externally a duplicate of
the writing within; and the tablet in its cover has then been baked
afresh. The same material was largely used by the Assyrians, and
many of their clay tablets still remain. They are of various sizes,
ranging from nine inches long by six and a half wide, to an inch
and a half by an inch wide, and even less. Some thousands of these
have been recovered; many are historical, some linguistic, some
geographical, some astronomical.
[edit] Notes
1. ^ Beginning date refers to first attestations, the assumed origins
of all scripts lie further back in the past.
[edit] References
* Millard, A. R. (1986). "The Infancy of the Alphabet". World
Archaeology 17 (3): 390â398. doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978
* Olivier, J.-P. (1986). "Cretan Writing in the Second Millennium
B.C". World Archaeology 17 (3): 377â389.
doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979977
[edit] Further reading
21st century sources
* Powell, Barry B. 2009. Writing: Theory and History of the
Technology of Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN
978-1-4051-6256-2
* Steven R. Fischer A History of Writing, Reaktion Books 2005
CN136481
* Hoffman, Joel M. 2004. In the Beginning: A Short History of the
Hebrew Language. New York University Press. Chapter 3.
Late 20th century sources
* Andrew Robinson, The Story of Writing, Thames & Hudson 1995 (second
edition: 1999). ISBN 0-500-28156-4
* Hans J. Nissen, P. Damerow, R. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping,
University of Chicago Press, 1993, ISBN 0-500-01665-8
* Denise Schmandt-Besserat HomePage, How Writing Came About,
University of Texas Press, 1992, ISBN 0-292-77704-3.
* Saggs, H., 1991. Civilization Before Greece and Rome Yale
University Press. Chapter 4.
* Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society,
Cambridge University Press, 1986
Earlier 20th century sources
* Smith, William Anton. The Reading Process. New York: The Macmillan
company, 1922.
* Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica; A Dictionary of Arts,
Sciences, Literature and General Information. Cambridge, Eng:
University Press, 1911. "Writing".
* Clodd, Edward. The Story of the Alphabet. Library of useful
stories. New York: D. Appleton and Co, 1910.
* Rawlings, Gertrude Burford. The Story of Books. London: Newnes,
1901.
[edit] External links
General
* History of Writing. historian.net
* Alphabet & protoalphabet the manifest of astrologic doctrine?
* The New Post-Literate
* Denise Schmandt-Besserat HomePage
* Children of the Code: A Brief History of Writing â Online Video
Broadcasts
* Cracking the Maya Code. NOVA, Public Broadcasting Service.
(Timeline (flash))
* BBC on tortoise shells discovered in China
* Fragments of pottery discovered in modern Pakistan
* Egyptian hieroglyphs c. 3000 BC
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WritingAshley Fetters & Spencer Kornhaber
American Schools October 2012 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
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The Writing Revolution
For years, nothing seemed capable of turning around New Dorp High
School’s dismal performance—not firing bad teachers, not flashy
education technology, not after-school programs. So, faced with
closure, the school’s principal went all-in on a very specific
curriculum reform, placing an overwhelming focus on teaching the basics
of analytic writing, every day, in virtually every class. What followed
was an extraordinary blossoming of student potential, across nearly
every subject—one that has made New Dorp a model for educational
reform.
By Peg Tyre
[mag-article-large.jpg?mak9wa]
Kyoto Hamada
A wide-ranging debate on how to best teach writing begins here on
Tuesday, September 25.
In 2009, when Monica DiBella entered New Dorp, a notorious public high
school on Staten Island, her academic future was cloudy. Monica had
struggled to read in early childhood, and had repeated first grade.
During her elementary-school years, she got more than 100 hours of
tutoring, but by fourth grade, she’d fallen behind her classmates
again. In the years that followed, Monica became comfortable with math
and learned to read passably well, but never seemed able to express her
thoughts in writing. During her freshman year at New Dorp, a ’70s-style
brick behemoth near a grimy beach, her history teacher asked her to
write an essay on Alexander the Great. At a loss, she jotted down her
opinion of the Macedonian ruler: “I think Alexander the Great was one
of the best military leaders.” An essay? “Basically, that wasn’t going
to happen,” she says, sweeping her blunt-cut brown hair from her brown
eyes. “It was like, well, I got a sentence down. What now?” Monica’s
mother, Santa, looked over her daughter’s answer—six simple sentences,
one of which didn’t make sense—with a mixture of fear and frustration.
Even a coherent, well-turned paragraph seemed beyond her daughter’s
ability. An essay? “It just didn’t seem like something Monica could
ever do.”
For decades, no one at New Dorp seemed to know how to help
low-performing students like Monica, and unfortunately, this troubled
population made up most of the school, which caters primarily to
students from poor and working-class families. In 2006, 82 percent of
freshmen entered the school reading below grade level. Students
routinely scored poorly on the English and history Regents exams, a New
York State graduation requirement: the essay questions were just too
difficult. Many would simply write a sentence or two and shut the test
booklet. In the spring of 2007, when administrators calculated
graduation rates, they found that four out of 10 students who had
started New Dorp as freshmen had dropped out, making it one of the
2,000 or so lowest-performing high schools in the nation. City
officials, who had been closing comprehensive high schools all over New
York and opening smaller, specialized ones in their stead, signaled
that New Dorp was in the crosshairs.
MORE ON EDUCATION
A National Report Card
[mag-article-small.jpg?mam18e]
A visual look at the educational successes and failures of the past
year
by Nicole Allan
Why Kids Should Grade Teachers
[mag-article-small.jpg?macz38]
New research is finding that the best way to evaluate teacher quality
is by asking students a few simple questions.
by Amanda Ripley
The Homeschool Diaries
[mag-article-small.jpg?macz49]
In New York City, teaching your own kids can make the most sense.
by Paul Elie
The Schoolmaster
[mag-article-small.jpg?malrps]
David Coleman's pending overhaul of the SAT has reignited a national
debate over how much we should expect from students and schools.
by Dana Goldstein
And so the school’s principal, Deirdre DeAngelis, began a detailed
investigation into why, ultimately, New Dorp’s students were failing.
By 2008, she and her faculty had come to a singular answer: bad
writing. Students’ inability to translate thoughts into coherent,
well-argued sentences, paragraphs, and essays was severely impeding
intellectual growth in many subjects. Consistently, one of the largest
differences between failing and successful students was that only the
latter could express their thoughts on the page. If nothing else,
DeAngelis and her teachers decided, beginning in the fall of 2009, New
Dorp students would learn to write well. “When they told me about the
writing program,” Monica says, “well, I was skeptical.” With disarming
candor, sharp-edged humor, and a shy smile, Monica occupies the middle
ground between child and adult—she can be both naive and knowing. “On
the other hand, it wasn’t like I had a choice. I go to high school. I
figured I’d give it a try.”
New Dorp’s Writing Revolution, which placed an intense focus, across
nearly every academic subject, on teaching the skills that underlie
good analytical writing, was a dramatic departure from what most
American students—especially low performers—are taught in high school.
The program challenged long-held assumptions about the students and
bitterly divided the staff. It also yielded extraordinary results. By
the time they were sophomores, the students who had begun receiving the
writing instruction as freshmen were already scoring higher on exams
than any previous New Dorp class. Pass rates for the English Regents,
for example, bounced from 67 percent in June 2009 to 89 percent in
2011; for the global-history exam, pass rates rose from 64 to
75 percent. The school reduced its Regents-repeater classes—cram
courses designed to help struggling students collect a graduation
requirement—from five classes of 35 students to two classes of 20
students.
The number of kids enrolling in a program that allows them to take
college-level classes shot up from 148 students in 2006 to 412 students
last year. Most important, although the makeup of the school has
remained about the same—roughly 40 percent of students are poor, a
third are Hispanic, and 12 percent are black—a greater proportion of
students who enter as freshmen leave wearing a cap and gown. This
spring, the graduation rate is expected to hit 80 percent, a staggering
improvement over the 63 percent figure that prevailed before the
Writing Revolution began. New Dorp, once the black sheep of the
borough, is being held up as a model of successful school turnaround.
“To be able to think critically and express that thinking, it’s where
we are going,” says Dennis Walcott, New York City’s schools chancellor.
“We are thrilled with what has happened there.”
In the coming months, the conversation about the importance of formal
writing instruction and its place in a public-school curriculum—the
conversation that was central to changing the culture at New Dorp—will
spread throughout the nation. Over the next two school years, 46 states
will align themselves with the Common Core State Standards. For the
first time, elementary-school students—who today mostly learn writing
by constructing personal narratives, memoirs, and small works of
fiction—will be required to write informative and persuasive essays. By
high school, students will be expected to produce mature and thoughtful
essays, not just in English class but in history and science classes as
well.
Common Core’s architect, David Coleman, says the new writing standards
are meant to reverse a pedagogical pendulum that has swung too far,
favoring self-expression and emotion over lucid communication. “As you
grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a shit
about what you feel or what you think,” he famously told a group of
educators last year in New York. Early accounts suggest that the new
writing standards will deliver a high-voltage shock to the American
public. Last spring, Florida school officials administered a writing
test that, for the first time, required 10th-graders to produce an
expository essay aligned with Common Core goals. The pass rate on the
exam plummeted from 80 percent in 2011 to 38 percent this year.
According to the Nation’s Report Card, in 2007, the latest year for
which this data is available, only 1 percent of all 12th-graders
nationwide could write a sophisticated, well-organized essay. Other
research has shown that 70 to 75 percent of students in grades four
through 12 write poorly. Over the past 30 years, as knowledge-based
work has come to dominate the economy, American high schools have
raised achievement rates in mathematics by providing more-extensive and
higher-level instruction. But high schools are still graduating large
numbers of students whose writing skills better equip them to work on
farms or in factories than in offices; for decades, achievement rates
in writing have remained low.
The program would not be unfamiliar to nuns who taught in Catholic
schools circa 1950. It is, at least initially, a rigid, unswerving
formula. “I prefer recipe,” Hochman says, “but formula? Yes! Okay!”
Although New Dorp teachers had observed students failing for years,
they never connected that failure to specific flaws in their own
teaching. They watched passively as Deirdre DeAngelis got rid of the
bad apples on the staff; won foundation money to break the school into
smaller, more personalized learning communities; and wooed corporate
partners to support after-school programs. Nothing seemed to move the
dial.
Her decision in 2008 to focus on how teachers supported writing inside
each classroom was not popular. “Most teachers,” said Nell Scharff, an
instructional expert DeAngelis hired, “entered into the process with a
strongly negative attitude.” They were doing their job, they told her
hotly. New Dorp students were simply not smart enough to write at the
high-school level. You just had to listen to the way the students
talked, one teacher pointed out—they rarely communicated in full
sentences, much less expressed complex thoughts. “It was my view that
these kids didn’t want to engage their brains,” Fran Simmons, who
teaches freshman English, told me. “They were lazy.”
Scharff, a lecturer at Baruch College, a part of the City University of
New York, kept pushing, asking: “What skills that lead to good writing
did struggling students lack?” She urged the teachers to focus on the
largest group: well-behaved kids like Monica who simply couldn’t seem
to cobble together a paragraph. “Those kids were showing up” every day,
Scharff said. “They seem to want to do well.” Gradually, the
bellyaching grew fainter. “Every quiz, every unit test, every homework
assignment became a new data point,” Scharff recalled. “We combed
through their writing. Again and again, we asked: ‘How did the kids in
our target group go wrong? What skills were missing?’ ”
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Writing system
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
CAPTION: Predominant scripts at the national level, with selected
regional and minority scripts.
Alphabet Latin Cyrillic&Latin Greek Georgian Armenian
Logographic+Syllabic Hanzi (L) Kana (2S)+Kanji(L)
Hangul(Featural-alphabetic S)+limited Hanja(L)
Abjad Arabic&Latin Hebrew Abugida N, S Indic Ethiopic Thaana Canadian
Syllabic
Writing systems of the world today.
Latin (alphabetic)
Cyrillic (alphabetic)
Hangul (featural alphabetic)
Other alphabets
Arabic (abjad)
Other abjads
Devanagari (abugida)
Other abugidas
Syllabaries
Chinese characters (logographic)
Writing systems
* History
* Grapheme
* List of writing systems
Types
* Featural alphabet
* Alphabet
* Abjad
* Abugida
* Syllabary
* Logography
* Shorthand
Related topics
* Pictogram
* Ideogram
* v
* t
* e
A writing system is a system of visual symbols recorded on paper or
another medium, used to represent elements expressible in language.
Contents
* 1 General properties
* 2 Basic terminology
* 3 History of writing systems
* 4 Functional classification of writing systems
+ 4.1 Logographic writing systems
+ 4.2 Syllabic writing systems
+ 4.3 Segmental writing systems: Alphabets
o 4.3.1 Consonantal writing systems: Abjads
o 4.3.2 Inherent-vowel writing systems: Abugidas
+ 4.4 Featural writing systems
+ 4.5 Ambiguous writing systems
* 5 Graphic classification of writing systems
+ 5.1 Directionality
* 6 Writing systems on computers
* 7 See also
* 8 Notes
* 9 References
* 10 External links
[edit] General properties
Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic
communication systems in that a writing system is always associated
with at least a 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 mankind. However, the development of
writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted
traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven
and slow. Once established, writing systems generally change more
slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve
features and expressions 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 characters and collectively called a script;
* 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).
[edit] Basic terminology
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by William Caslon, letter founder;
from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.
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.
The generic term text refers to an instance of written material. The
act of composing and recording a text may be referred to as writing,
and the act of viewing and interpreting the text as reading.
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.
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 different allographs when written as a cursive, block, or typed
letter. The choice of a particular allographs 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.
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.
Writing systems are conceptual systems, as are the languages to which
they refer. 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.
[edit] History of writing systems
Main article: History of writing
Table of scripts in the introduction to Sanskrit-English Dictionary by
Monier Monier-Williams
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, ca. 6600 BC
* VinÄa signs (TÄrtÄria tablets), ca. 5300 BC
* Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC.
* Nsibidi script, ca. 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
3400â3200 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.
The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others
Olmec and Maya scripts) are generally believed to have had independent
origins.
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.^[1]^[2] The Latin alphabet, a direct
descendant, is by far the most common writing system in use.^[3]
[edit] Functional classification of writing systems
For lists of writing systems by type, see List of writing systems.
This textbook for Puyi shows the English alphabet. Although the English
letters run from left to right, the Chinese explanations run from top
to bottom, as traditionally written.
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^[4]
* pictographic script
* ideographic script
* analytic transitional script
* phonetic script
* alphabetic script
as too simplistic, often considering the categories to be incomparable.
Hill^[5] split writing into three major categories of linguistic
analysis, one of which covers discourses and is not usually considered
writing proper:
* discourse system
+ 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
o phonemic writing system, e.g. Ancient Greek, Old English
o morpho-phonemic writing system, e.g. German, Modern
English
DeFrancis,^[6] criticizing Sampson's^[7] introduction of semasiographic
writing and featural alphabets stresses the phonographic quality of
writing proper
* pictures
+ nonwriting
+ writing
o rebus
# syllabic systems
@ pure syllabic, e.g. Linear B, Yi, Kana,
Cherokee
@ morpho-syllabic, e.g. Sumerian, Chinese, Mayan
@ consonantal
- morpho-consonantal, e.g. Egyptian
- pure consonantal, e.g. Phoenician
- alphabetic
= pure phonemic, e.g. Greek
= morpho-phonemic, e.g. English
Faber^[8] categorizes phonographic writing by two levels, linearity and
coding:
* logographic, e.g. Chinese, Ancient Egyptian
* phonographic
+ syllabically linear
o syllabically coded, e.g. Kana, Akkadian
o segmentally coded, e.g. Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic,
Ethiopian, Amharic, Devanagari
+ segmentally linear
o complete (alphabet), e.g. Greco-Latin, Cyrillic
o defective, e.g. Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Old South
Arabian, Old Hebrew
CAPTION: Classification by Daniels
Type Each symbol represents Example
Logographic morpheme Chinese characters
Syllabic syllable or mora Japanese kana
Alphabetic phoneme (consonant or vowel) Latin alphabet
Abugida phoneme (consonant+vowel) Indian DevanÄgarÄ«
Abjad phoneme (consonant) Arabic alphabet
Featural phonetic feature Korean hangul
[edit] Logographic writing systems
Main article: Logogram
Early Chinese character for sun (ri), 1200 B.C.
Modern Chinese character (ri) meaning sun or day
A logogram is a single written character which represents a complete
grammatical word. Most 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 the major disadvantage of the 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, this is only true for
closely related languages, like the Chinese languages, as syntactical
constraints reduce the portability of a given logographic system.
Japanese uses Chinese logograms extensively in its writing systems,
with most of the symbols carrying the same or similar meanings.
However, the semantics, and especially the grammar, are different
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 â everyone who uses those
symbols understands what 1 means whether he or she calls 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 sign % and the many signs representing units of currency
($, ¢, â¬, £, Â¥ and 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 semanticâphonetic 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.
The most important (and, to a degree, the only surviving) modern
logographic writing system is the Chinese one, whose characters are or
were used, with varying degrees of modification, in 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.
[edit] Syllabic writing systems
Main article: Syllabary
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 onsetâcoda or onsetârime table.
Another type of writing system with systematic syllabic linear symbols,
the abugidas, is discussed below.
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 vowels and complex consonant clusters, making it
cumbersome to write English words with a syllabary. To write English
using a syllabary, every possible syllable in English would have to
have a separate symbol, and whereas the number of possible syllables in
Japanese is no more than about fifty to sixty, in English there are
many thousands.
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 Chinese languages, also represents
syllables, and includes separate glyphs for nearly all of the many
thousand 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 Native American languages such as Cherokee. Several
languages of the Ancient Near East used forms of cuneiform, which is a
syllabary with some non-syllabic elements.
[edit] Segmental writing systems: Alphabets
Main article: Alphabet
An alphabet is a small set of letters â basic written symbols â each of
which roughly represents or represented historically a phoneme of a
spoken language. The word alphabet is derived from alpha and beta, the
first two symbols of the Greek alphabet.
[edit] Consonantal writing systems: Abjads
Main article: Abjad
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 (such as Arabic and Hebrew) have markings for vowels as
well, but 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, the most famous case being 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, bÄ', jÄ«m, dÄl, though the word may have
earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic.
Abjad is still the word for alphabet in Arabic, Malay and Indonesian.
[edit] Inherent-vowel writing systems: Abugidas
Main article: Abugida
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 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.
Balinese lontar writing on palm leaf, Southeast Asia. Artifacts can be
seen in the Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois.
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.
[edit] Featural writing 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.
Many scholars, e.g. John DeFrancis, reject this class or at least
labeling hangul as such.^[citation needed] The Korean script is a
conscious script creation by literate experts, which Daniels calls a
"sophisticated grammatogeny".^[citation needed] 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".^[9]
[edit] Ambiguous writing 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 phonemic letter clusters are a complex match to
sound^[clarification needed]. 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.
[edit] Graphic classification of writing systems
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.
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.
[edit] Directionality
Overview of the writing directions used in the world.
See also: Right-to-left, Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian
scripts, Bi-directional text, and Mirror writing
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,^[10] horizontally (left-to-right or right-to-left)
or vertically (up or down). It was commonly written
boustrophedonically: starting in one (horizontal) direction, then
turning at the end of the line and reversing direction.
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. 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.
[edit] Writing systems 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
different 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.
[edit] See also
* History of writing
* Artificial script
* Asemic writing
* Calligraphy
* Digraphia
* Dyslexia
* Font
* Formal language
* History of writing numbers
* ISO 15924 â codes for the representation of names of scripts
* List of inventors of writing systems
* List of writing systems
* Lower case
* Majuscule
* Nü Shu
* Official script
* Orthography
* Pasigraphy
* Penmanship
* Shorthand
* Spelling
* Transliteration
* Written language
[edit] Notes
1. ^ Coulmas, Florian (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing
Systems. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.. ISBN 0-631-21481-X.
2. ^ Millard 1986, p. 396
3. ^ Haarmann 2004, p. 96
4. ^ David Diringer (1962): Writing. London.
5. ^ Archibald Hill (1967): The typology of Writing systems. In:
William A. Austin (ed.), Papers in Linguistics in Honor of Leon
Dostert. The Hague, 92â99.
6. ^ John DeFrancis (1989): Visible speech. The diverse oneness of
writing systems. Honolulu
7. ^ Geoffrey Sampson (1986): Writing Systems. A Linguistic Approach.
London
8. ^ Alice Faber (1992): Phonemic segmentation as an epiphenomenon.
Evidence from the history of alphabetic writing. In: Pamela Downing
et al. (ed.): The Linguistics of Literacy. Amsterdam. 111â134.
9. ^ Primus, Beatrice. 2004. A featural analysis of the Modern Roman
Alphabet. Written Language and Literacy, 7.2, 235â274
10. ^ Threatte, Leslie (1980). The grammar of Attic inscriptions. W. de
Gruyter. pp. 54â55. ISBN 3-11-007344-7.
[edit] References
* Cisse, Mamadou. 2006. "Ecrits et écritures en Afrique de l'Ouest".
Sudlangues n°6, http://www.sudlangues.sn/spip.php?article101
* Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing
systems. Oxford: Blackwell.
* Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds. 1996. The World's
Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
* DeFrancis, John. 1990. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy.
Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1068-6
* Haarmann, Harald (2004), Geschichte der Schrift (2nd ed.),
München: C. H. Beck, ISBN 3-406-47998-7
* Hannas, William. C. 1997. Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University
of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1892-X (paperback); ISBN 0-8248-1842-3
(hardcover)
* Millard, A. R. (1986), "The Infancy of the Alphabet", World
Archaeology 17 (3): 390â398, doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978
* Nishiyama, Yutaka. 2010. The Mathematics of Direction in Writing.
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Vol.61,
No.3.
* Rogers, Henry. 2005. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach.
Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-23463-2 (hardcover); ISBN
0-631-23464-0 (paperback)
* Sampson, Geoffrey. 1985. Writing Systems. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1756-7 (paper), ISBN
0-8047-1254-9 (cloth).
* Smalley, W. A. (ed.) 1964. Orthography studies: articles on new
writing systems. London: United Bible Society.
[edit] External links
* Writing Systems Research Free first issue of a journal devoted to
research on writing systems
* Arch Chinese (Traditional & Simplified) Chinese character writing
animations and native speaker pronunciations
* decodeunicode Unicode Wiki with all 98,884 Unicode 5.0 characters
as gifs in three sizes
* African writing systems
* Omniglot A concise guide to the writing systems and languages of
the world.
* (Hungarian) Ultraweb.hu - fÅoldal
* Ancient Scripts Introduction to different writing systems
* Michael Everson's Alphabets of Europe
* The Unicode Consortium
* Elian script a writing system that combines the linearity of
spelling with the free-form aspects of drawing.
* (Russian) Written of the World
* v
* t
* e
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The Dartmouth Institute for Writing and Rhetoric fosters students’
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Complete list of exhibits
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* Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
This manuscript of ‘The Canterbury Tales’ describes the pilgrims
who assembled in Southwark. References to the capital in the Tales
are plentiful, including the Prioress, whose suspect French was
learnt in the 'scole of Stratford atte Bowe'.
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, early 15th century,
Lansdowne MS 851 © The British Library Board
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* William Blake's Notebook
William Blake's Notebook
Like the narrator of his 1792 poem 'London', William Blake would
walk the streets of his neighbourhood, seeking inspiration, but
alert to the signs of suffering he encountered.
William Blake's Notebook, 1787-1817, Add. MS 49460 © The British
Library Board
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* Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Lakes' Notebook
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 'Lakes' Notebook
A map from one of Coleridge's notebooks kept between July and
September 1802, recording his solitary exploration of the
mountainous landscape of the Lake District.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Lakes' Notebook, 1802 © The British
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* vLewis Carroll, 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground'
Lewis Carroll, 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground'
The Thames was an inspiration for one of the greatest children's
classics – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, here seen in its first
handwritten version
Lewis Carroll, 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground', 1865, Add. MS
46700 © The British Library Board
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* Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie
Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie
One of the great nostalgic paeans to rural life, Cider with Rosie
is an autobiographical account of Laurie Lee's childhood in Slad,
Gloucestershire.
Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie, 1959, Add. MS 88936/2/25 © United
Agents on behalf of the Estate of Laurie Lee
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* Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin, Remains of Elmet
Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin, Remains of Elmet
Ted Hughes spent his earliest years in the Calder Valley in West
Yorkshire (the ancient Celtic kingdom of Elmet), and celebrated the
area in a collaboration with photographer Fay Godwin.
Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin, Remains of Elmet, 1979 © Fay Godwin
View full size image
* Angela Carter, Wise Children
Angela Carter, Wise Children
After time in Japan, Carter settled in south London, and Wise
Children is a lament for a lost London and a celebration of the
dizzying linguistic richness of its inhabitants.
Angela Carter, Wise Children, 1991, Add. MS 88899/1/16 © Angela
Carter. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Angela Carter
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Tablets with Semi-Pictographic Writing
Clay
Uruk-Jamdat Nasr Period (ca. 3200-2900 B.C.)
Left: Tell Asmar
Excavated by the Oriental Institute, 1933. OIM A12259.
Right: Purchased in Paris, 1920. OIM A2514
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Writing emerged in many different cultures and in numerous locations
throughout the ancient world. It was not the creation of any one
people. However, the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia are credited with
inventing the earliest form of writing, which appeared ca. 3500B.C. The
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Asmar in Iraq.
The writings on these tablets are simple pictures, or pictograms, which
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commercial transactions or administrative procedures. There are also
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Eventually, cuneiform script was used to produce some of the greatest
literary works in recorded history.
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Writing a Plugin
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Contents
* 1 Introduction
* 2 Creating a Plugin
+ 2.1 Names, Files, and Locations
o 2.1.1 Plugin Name
o 2.1.2 Plugin Files
o 2.1.3 Readme File
o 2.1.4 Home Page
+ 2.2 File Headers
o 2.2.1 Standard Plugin Information
o 2.2.2 License
+ 2.3 Programming Your Plugin
o 2.3.1 WordPress Plugin Hooks
o 2.3.2 Template Tags
o 2.3.3 Saving Plugin Data to the Database
o 2.3.4 WordPress Options Mechanism
o 2.3.5 Administration Panels
+ 2.4 Internationalizing Your Plugin
* 3 Updating your Plugin
* 4 Plugin Development Suggestions
* 5 External Resources
Introduction
WordPress Plugins allow easy modification, customization, and
enhancement to a WordPress blog. Instead of changing the core
programming of WordPress, you can add functionality with WordPress
Plugins. Here is a basic definition:
WordPress Plugin: A WordPress Plugin is a program, or a set of one or
more functions, written in the PHP scripting language, that adds a
specific set of features or services to the WordPress weblog, which can
be seamlessly integrated with the weblog using access points and
methods provided by the WordPress Plugin Application Program Interface
(API).
Wishing that WordPress had some new or modified functionality? The
first thing to do is to search various WordPress Plugin repositories
and sources to see if someone has already created a WordPress Plugin
that suits your needs. If not, this article will guide you through the
process of creating your own WordPress Plugins.
This article assumes you are already familiar with the basic
functionality of WordPress, and PHP programming.
Resources
* To understand how WordPress Plugins work and how to install them on
your WordPress blog, see Plugins.
* There is a comprehensive list of articles and resources for Plugin
developers, including external articles on writing WordPress
Plugins, and articles on special topics, in Plugin Resources.
* To learn the basics about how WordPress Plugins are written, view
the source code for well-written Plugins, such as Hello Dolly
distributed with WordPress.
* Once you have written your WordPress Plugin, read Plugin Submission
and Promotion to learn how to distribute it and share it with
others.
Creating a Plugin
This section of the article goes through the steps you need to follow,
and things to consider when creating a well-structured WordPress
Plugin.
Names, Files, and Locations
Plugin Name
The first task in creating a WordPress Plugin is to think about what
the Plugin will do, and make a (hopefully unique) name for your Plugin.
Check out Plugins and the other repositories it refers to, to verify
that your name is unique; you might also do a Google search on your
proposed name. Most Plugin developers choose to use names that somewhat
describe what the Plugin does; for instance, a weather-related Plugin
would probably have the word "weather" in the name. The name can be
multiple words.
Plugin Files
The next step is to create a PHP file with a name derived from your
chosen Plugin name. For instance, if your Plugin will be called
"Fabulous Functionality", you might call your PHP file fabfunc.php.
Again, try to choose a unique name. People who install your Plugin will
be putting this PHP file into the WordPress Plugin directory in their
installation, wp-content/plugins/, so no two Plugins they are using can
have the same PHP file name.
Another option is to split your Plugin into multiple files. Your
WordPress Plugin must have at least one PHP file; it could also contain
JavaScript files, CSS files, image files, language files, etc. If there
are multiple files, pick a unique name for a file directory and for the
main PHP file, such as fabfunc and fabfunc.php in this example, put all
your Plugin's files into that directory, and tell your Plugin users to
install the whole directory under wp-content/plugins/. However, an
installation can be configured for wp-content/plugins to be moved, so
you must use plugin_dir_path() and plugins_url() for absolute paths and
URLs. See:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Determining_Plugin_and_Content_Directories
for more details.
In the rest of this article, "the Plugin PHP file" refers to the main
Plugin PHP file, whether in wp-content/plugins/ or a sub-directory.
Readme File
If you want to host your Plugin on
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/, you also need to create a
readme.txt file in a standard format, and include it with your Plugin.
See http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about/readme.txt for a
description of the format.
Note that the WordPress plugin repository takes the "Requires" and
"Tested up to" versions from the readme.txt in the stable tag.
Home Page
It is also very useful to create a web page to act as the home page for
your WordPress Plugin. This page should describe how to install the
Plugin, what it does, what versions of WordPress it is compatible with,
what has changed from version to version of your Plugin, and how to use
the Plugin.
File Headers
Now it's time to put some information into your main Plugin PHP file.
Standard Plugin Information
The top of your Plugin's main PHP file must contain a standard Plugin
information header. This header lets WordPress recognize that your
Plugin exists, add it to the Plugin management screen so it can be
activated, load it, and run its functions; without the header, your
Plugin will never be activated and will never run. Here is the header
format:
The minimum information WordPress needs to recognize your Plugin is the
Plugin Name line. The rest of the information (if present) will be used
to create the table of Plugins on the Plugin management screen. The
order of the lines is not important.
So that the upgrade mechanism can correctly read the version of your
plugin it is recommended that you pick a format for the version number
and stick to it between the different releases. For example, x.x or
x.x.x or xx.xx.xxx
The License slug should be a short common identifier for the license
the plugin is under and is meant to be a simple way of being explicit
about the license of the code.
Important: file must be in UTF-8 encoding.
License
It is customary to follow the standard header with information about
licensing for the Plugin. Most Plugins use the GPL2 license used by
WordPress or a license compatible with the GPL2. To indicate a GPL2
license, include the following lines in your Plugin:
Programming Your Plugin
Now, it's time to make your Plugin actually do something. This section
contains some general ideas about Plugin development, and describes how
to accomplish several tasks your Plugin will need to do.
WordPress Plugin Hooks
Many WordPress Plugins accomplish their goals by connecting to one or
more WordPress Plugin "hooks". The way Plugin hooks work is that at
various times while WordPress is running, WordPress checks to see if
any Plugins have registered functions to run at that time, and if so,
the functions are run. These functions modify the default behavior of
WordPress.
For instance, before WordPress adds the title of a post to browser
output, it first checks to see if any Plugin has registered a function
for the "filter" hook called "the_title". If so, the title text is
passed in turn through each registered function, and the final result
is what is printed. So, if your Plugin needs to add some information to
the printed title, it can register a "the_title" filter function.
Another example is the "action" hook called "wp_footer". Just before
the end of the HTML page WordPress is generating, it checks to see
whether any Plugins have registered functions for the "wp_footer"
action hook, and runs them in turn.
You can learn more about how to register functions for both filter and
action hooks, and what Plugin hooks are available in WordPress, in the
Plugin API. If you find a spot in the WordPress code where you'd like
to have an action or filter, but WordPress doesn't have one, you can
also suggest new hooks (suggestions will generally be taken); see
Reporting Bugs to find out how.
Template Tags
Another way for a WordPress Plugin to add functionality to WordPress is
by creating custom Template Tags. Someone who wants to use your Plugin
can add these "tags" to their theme, in the sidebar, post content
section, or wherever it is appropriate. For instance, a Plugin that
adds geographical tags to posts might define a template tag function
called geotag_list_states() for the sidebar, which lists all the states
posts are tagged with, with links to the state-based archive pages the
Plugin enables.
To define a custom template tag, simply write a PHP function and
document it for Plugin users on your Plugin's home page and/or in the
Plugin's main PHP file. It's a good idea when documenting the function
to give an example of exactly what needs to be added to the theme file
to use the function, including the .
Saving Plugin Data to the Database
Most WordPress Plugins will need to get some input from the site owner
or blog users and save it between sessions, for use in its filter
functions, action functions, and template functions. This information
has to be saved in the WordPress database, in order to be persistent
between sessions. There are four (4) methods for saving Plugin data in
the database:
1. Use the WordPress "option" mechanism (described below). This method
is appropriate for storing relatively small amounts of relatively
static, named pieces of data -- the type of data you'd expect the
site owner to enter when first setting up the Plugin, and rarely
change thereafter.
2. Post Meta (a.k.a. Custom Fields). Appropriate for data associated
with individual posts, pages, or attachments. See post_meta
Function Examples, add_post_meta(), and related functions.
3. Custom Taxonomy. For classifying posts or other objects like users
and comments and/or for a user-editable name/value list of data
consider using a Custom Taxonomy, especially when you want to
access all posts/objects associated with a given taxonomy term. See
Custom Taxonomies.
4. Create a new, custom database table. This method is appropriate for
data not associated with individual posts, pages, attachments, or
comments -- the type of data that will grow as time goes on, and
that doesn't have individual names. See Creating Tables with
Plugins for information on how to do this.
WordPress Options Mechanism
See Creating Options Pages for info on how to create a page that will
automatically save your options for you.
WordPress has a mechanism for saving, updating, and retrieving
individual, named pieces of data ("options") in the WordPress database.
Option values can be strings, arrays, or PHP objects (they will be
"serialized", or converted to a string, before storage, and
unserialized when retrieved). Option names are strings, and they must
be unique, so that they do not conflict with either WordPress or other
Plugins.
It's also generally considered a good idea to minimize the number of
options you use for your plugin. For example, instead of storing 10
different named options consider storing a serialized array of 10
elements as a single named option.
Here are the main functions your Plugin can use to access WordPress
options.
add_option($name, $value, $deprecated, $autoload);
Creates a new option; does nothing if option already exists.
$name
Required (string). Name of the option to be added.
$value
Optional (mixed), defaults to empty string. The option value to
be stored.
$deprecated
Optional (string), no longer used by WordPress, You may pass an
empty string or null to this argument if you wish to use the
following $autoload parameter.
$autoload
Optional, defaults to 'yes' (enum: 'yes' or 'no'). If set to
'yes' the setting is automatically retrieved by the
wp_load_alloptions function.
get_option($option);
Retrieves an option value from the database.
$option
Required (string). Name of the option whose value you want
returned. You can find a list of the default options that are
installed with WordPress at the Option Reference.
update_option($option_name, $newvalue);
Updates or creates an option value in the database (note that
add_option does not have to be called if you do not want to use
the $deprecated or $autoload parameters).
$option_name
Required (string). Name of the option to update.
$newvalue
Required. (string|array|object) The new value for the option.
Administration Panels
Assuming that your Plugin has some options stored in the WordPress
database (see section above), you will probably want it to have an
administration panel that will enable your Plugin users to view and
edit option values. The methods for doing this are described in Adding
Administration Menus.
Internationalizing Your Plugin
Once you have the programming for your Plugin done, another
consideration (assuming you are planning on distributing your Plugin)
is internationalization. Internationalization is the process of setting
up software so that it can be localized; localization is the process of
translating text displayed by the software into different languages.
WordPress is used all around the world, so it has internationalization
and localization built into its structure, including localization of
Plugins.
Please note that language files for Plugins ARE NOT automatically
loaded. Add this to the Plugin code to make sure the language file(s)
are loaded:
load_plugin_textdomain('your-unique-name', false, basename( dirname( __F
ILE__ ) ) . '/languages' );
To fetch a string simply use __('String name','your-unique-name'); to
return the translation or _e('String name','your-unique-name'); to echo
the translation. Translations will then go into your plugin's
/languages folder.
It is highly recommended that you internationalize your Plugin, so that
users from different countries can localize it. There is a
comprehensive reference on internationalization, including a section
describing how to internationalize your plugin, at I18n for WordPress
Developers.
Updating your Plugin
This section describes necessary steps to update your Plugin when you
host it on http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins. It especially lists
some details regarding the use of Subversion (SVN) with wordpress.org.
Assuming you have already submitted your plugin to the WordPress Plugin
Repository, over time you will probably find the need, and hopefully
the time, to add features to your Plugin or fix bugs. Work on these
changes and commit the changes to the trunk of your plugin, as often as
you want. The changes will be publicly visible, but only to the
technically-minded people checking out your Plugin via SVN. What other
users download through the website or their WordPress Plugin
administration will not change.
When you're ready to release a new version of the Plugin:
* Make sure everything is committed and the new version actually
works. Pay attention to all WordPress versions your Plugin supports
and try to test it with all of them. Don't just test the new
features, also make sure you didn't accidentally break some older
functionality of the Plugin.
* Change the version number in the header comment of the main PHP
file to the new version number (in the trunk folder).
* Change the version number in the 'Stable tag' field of the
readme.txt file (in the trunk folder).
* Add a new sub-section in the 'changelog' section of the readme.txt
file, briefly describing what changed compared to the last release.
This will be listed on the 'Changelog' tab of the Plugin page.
* Commit these changes.
* Create a new SVN tag as a copy of trunk, following this guide.
Give the system a couple of minutes to work, and then check the
wordpress.org Plugin page and a WordPress installation with your Plugin
to see if everything updated correctly and the WordPress installation
shows an update for your Plugin (the update checks might be cached, so
this could take some time -- try visiting the 'available updates' page
in your WordPress installation).
Troubleshooting:
* The Plugin's page on wordpress.org still lists the old version.
Have you updated the 'stable tag' field in the trunk folder? Just
creating a tag and updating the readme.txt in the tag folder is not
enough!
* The Plugin's page offers a zip file with the new version, but the
button still lists the old version number and no update
notification happens in your WordPress installations. Have you
remembered to update the 'Version' comment in the main PHP file?
* For other problems check Otto's good write-up of common problems:
The Plugins directory and readme.txt files
Plugin Development Suggestions
This last section contains some random suggestions regarding Plugin
development.
* The code of a WordPress Plugin should follow the WordPress Coding
Standards. Please consider the Inline Documentation Standards as
well.
* All the functions in your Plugin need to have unique names that are
different from functions in the WordPress core, other Plugins, and
themes. For that reason, it is a good idea to use a unique function
name prefix on all of your Plugin's functions. A far superior
possibility is to define your Plugin functions inside a class
(which also needs to have a unique name).
* Do not hardcode the WordPress database table prefix (usually "wp_")
into your Plugins. Be sure to use the $wpdb->prefix variable
instead.
* Database reading is cheap, but writing is expensive. Databases are
exceptionally good at fetching data and giving it to you, and these
operations are (usually) lightning quick. Making changes to the
database, though, is a more complex process, and computationally
more expensive. As a result, try to minimize the amount of writing
you do to the database. Get everything prepared in your code first,
so that you can make only those write operations that you need.
* Use WordPress' APIs instead of using direct SQL where possible. For
example, use get_posts() or new WP_Query() instead of SELECT * FROM
{$wpdb->prefix}_posts.
* Use the existing database tables instead of creating new custom
tables if possible. Most use-cases can be accomplished with custom
post types and meta data, custom taxonomy and/or one of the other
standard tables and using the standard tables provides a lot of UI
and other functionality "for free." Think very carefully before
adding a table because it adds complexity to your plugin that many
users and site builders prefer to avoid.
* SELECT only what you need. Even though databases fetch data
blindingly fast, you should still try to reduce the load on the
database by only selecting that data which you need to use. If you
need to count the number of rows in a table don't SELECT * FROM,
because all the data in all the rows will be pulled, wasting
memory. Likewise, if you only need the post_id and the post_author
in your Plugin, then just SELECT those specific fields, to minimize
database load. Remember: hundreds of other processes may be hitting
the database at the same time. The database and server each have
only so many resources to spread around amongst all those
processes. Learning how to minimize your Plugin's hit against the
database will ensure that your Plugin isn't the one that is blamed
for abuse of resources.
* Eliminate PHP errors in your plugin. Add define('WP_DEBUG', true);
to your wp-config.php file, try all of your plugin functionality,
and check to see if there are any errors or warnings. Fix any that
occur, and continue in debug mode until they have all been
eliminated.
* Try not to echo