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 Related topics Pictogram Ideogram

A writing system is a symbolic system used to represent elements or statements 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 4.3.1 Consonantal writing systems: Abjads 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 References 9 External links General properties

Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast other possible symbolic systems such as information signs painting maps and mathematicscitation needed often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken language.

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 has 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 Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no longer current in the spoken language. 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.

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 arbitrarily 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 able to 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). 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 individual product of a writing system. The act of composing a text may be referred to as writing and the act of interpreting the text as reading. Likewise 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 the technical term coined to refer to the specific base or atomic units of a given writing system. Graphemes are the minimally significant elements which taken together comprise the set of "building blocks" out of which texts of a given writing system 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).

Note that 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 selection between different allographs may be influenced by the medium used the writing instrument the stylistic choice of the writer 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. 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 Vina signs (Trtria tablets) ca. 5300 BC Early Indus script ca. 3500 BC 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 34003200 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.12 The Latin alphabet a direct descendant is by far the most common writing system in use.3 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 Diringers4 pictographic script ideographic script analytic transitional script phonetic script alphabetic script as too simplistic often considering the categories to be incomparable. Hill5 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 phonemic writing system e.g. Ancient Greek Old English morpho-phonemic writing system e.g. German Modern English DeFrancis6 criticizing Sampsons7 introduction of semasiographic writing and featural alphabets stresses the phonographic quality of writing proper pictures nonwriting writing 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 Faber8 categorizes phonographic writing by two levels linearity and coding: logographic e.g. Chinese Ancient Egyptian phonographic syllabically linear syllabically coded e.g. Kana Akkadian segmentally coded e.g. Hebrew Syriac Arabic Ethiopian Amharic Devanagari segmentally linear complete (alphabet) e.g. Greco-Latin Cyrillic defective e.g. Ugaritic Phoenician Aramaic Old South Arabian Old Hebrew 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 Devangar Abjad phoneme (consonant) Arabic alphabet Featural phonetic feature Korean hangul 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 everyone who uses those symbols understands what 1 means whether he or she calls it one eins uno yi ichi ehad 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 ($ 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 semanticphonetic compounds symbols which include an element that represents the meaning and an 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. 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 onsetcoda or onsetrime 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 1164 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. Segmental writing systems: Alphabets Main article: Alphabet An alphabet is a small set of letters basic written symbols 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. In a perfectly phonemic alphabet the phonemes and letters would correspond perfectly in two directions: a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. Each language has general rules that govern the association between letters and phonemes but depending on the language these rules may or may not be consistently followed. Perfectly phonemic alphabets are very easy to use and learn and languages that have them (for example Serbocroatian Romanian Slovenian or Finnish) have much lower barriers to literacy than languages such as English which has a very complex and irregular spelling system. As languages often evolve independently of their writing systems and writing systems have been borrowed for languages for which they were not designed the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language. In modern times when linguists invent a writing system for a language that didn't previously have one the goal is usually to develop a phonemic alphabet. It should be noted that a truly phonetic alphabet for a natural spoken language would be very cumbersome as it would have to have a huge variety of phonetic variation. An example of such a writing system is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Consonantal writing systems: Abjads Main article: Consonantary 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 b' jm dl though the word may have earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic. Abjad is still the word for alphabet in Arabic Malay and Indonesian. 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. 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. DeFrancis reject this class or at least labeling hangul as such. The Korean script is a conscious script creation by literate experts which Daniels calls a sophisticated grammatogeny. 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 phones to words. It has been shown that even the roman script has sub-character features.9 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. 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. 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're 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 situations 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 which 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. Directionality 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 in either horizontal direction with the animal and human glyphs turned to face the beginning of the line. The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions10 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 Roman alphabet and technical limitations in popular electronic document formats. The Uighur alphabet and its descendants are unique in being the only scripts 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 Hanun'o are traditionally written with lines moving away from the writer from bottom to top but are read horizontally left to right. 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. See also History of writing Artificial script Asemic writing Calligraphy Digraphia Dyslexia Font Formal language Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic History of writing numbers ISO 15924 codes for the representation of names of scripts List of inventors of writing systems List of writing systems Lower case Majuscule N Shu Official script Orthography Pasigraphy Penmanship Shorthand Spelling Transliteration Written language References Coulmas Florian (1996). The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.. ISBN 0-631-21481-X.  Millard 1986 p. 396 Haarmann 2004 p. 96 David Diringer (1962): Writing. London. Archibald Hill (1967): The typology of Writing systems. In: William A. Austin (ed.) Papers in Linguistics in Honor of Leon Dostert. The Hague 9299. John DeFrancis (1989): Visible speech. The diverse oneness of writing systems. Honolulu Geoffrey Sampson (1986): Writing Systems. A Linguistic Approach. London 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. 111134. Primus Beatrice. 2004. A featural analysis of the Modern Roman Alphabet. Written Language and Literacy 7.2 235274 Threatte Leslie (1980). The grammar of Attic inscriptions. W. de Gruyter. pp. 5455. ISBN 3-11-007344-7.  Cisse Mamadou. 2006. "Ecrits et critures en Afrique de l'Ouest". Sudlangues n6 http://www.sudlangues.sn/spip.phparticle101 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.) Mnchen: 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): 390398  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. 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 98884 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 - foldal 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 d eWriting systems Overview History of writing  History of the alphabet  Graphemes  Scripts in Unicode Lists Writing systems  Languages by writing system / by first written account  Undeciphered writing systems  Inventors of writing systems Types Featural alphabets  Alphabets  Abjads  Alphasyllabaries / Abugidas  Syllabaries  Semi-syllabaries  Ideogrammic  Pictographic  Logographic  Numeral v d eTypes of writing systems Overview History of writing  Grapheme Lists Writing systems (undeciphered  inventors)  Languages by writing system / by first written accounts  Types  Abjads Numerals Aramaic  Arabic  Hebrew  Jawi  Nabataean  Pahlavi  Pegon  Phoenician  Proto-Canaanite  Psalter  Sabaean  Samaritan  South Arabian  Sogdian  Syriac  Tifinagh  Ugaritic  Abugidas Brahmic Ahom  Balinese  Batak  Baybayin  Brhm  Buhid  Burmese  Chakma  Cham  Devangar  Dhives Akuru  Eastern Nagari  Grantha  Gujarati  Gupta  Gurmukh  Hanun'o  Javanese  Kadamba  Kaithi  Kalinga  Kannada  Khmer  Lanna  Lao  Lepcha  Limbu  Lontara  Malayalam  Meitei Mayek  Mithilakshar  Modi  Mon  Ngar  Nepal  Old Kawi  Old Sundanese  Oriya  Pallava  Phagspa  Ranjana  Rejang  Rencong  rad  Saurashtra  Sinhala  Siddha  Soyombo  Sundanese  Sylheti Nagari  Tagbanwa  Tai Dam  Tai Le  Takri  Tamil  Telugu  Thai  Tibetan  Tocharian  Varang Kshiti Others Boyd's syllabic shorthand  Canadian Aboriginal  Ge'ez  Japanese braille  Kharoh  Meroitic  Pitman shorthand  Pollard script  Sorang Sompeng  Tna  Thomas Natural Shorthand  Alphabets Linear Armenian  Avestan  Beitha Kukju  Borama  Coptic  Cyrillic  Deseret  Eclectic shorthand  Elbasan  Fraser  Gabelsberger shorthand  Georgian  Glagolitic  Gothic  Gregg shorthand  Greek  Greco-Iberian alphabet  Euboean  Hangul  International Phonetic  Kaddare  Latin  Manchu  Mandaic  Mongolian  Neo-Tifinagh  N'Ko  Ogham  Ol Chiki  Old Hungarian  Old Italic  Old Permic  Orkhon  Osmanya  Runic  Shavian alphabet  New Tai Lue  Bassa Vah  Visible Speech Non-linear Braille (Hebrew  Korean)  Maritime flags  Morse code  New York Point  Semaphore line  Flag semaphore  Moon type  Ideo/Pictograms Aztec  Blissymbol  DanceWriting  Dongba  Mkmaq  New Epoch Notation Painting  Nsibidi  SignWriting  Logograms Chinese Traditional  Simplified  Ch Nm  Hanja  Kanji Chinese-based Jurchen  Khitan  Tangut script  Zhuang Other logo-syllabic Anatolian  Cuneiform  Maya  Yi Logo-consonantal Demotic  Hieratic  Hieroglyphs Numerals Hindu-Arabic  Abjad  Greek (Attic)  Roman  Semi-syllabaries Full Celtiberian  Northeastern Iberian  Southeastern Iberian Redundant Southwest  Pahawh Hmong  Zhyn fho  Syllabaries Afaka  Cherokee  Cypriot  Geba  Hiragana  Katakana  Kikakui  Kpelle  Linear B  Man'ygana  Nshu  Old Persian Cuneiform  Vai  Woleai  Yi  Yugtun v d eLiteracy Teaching literacy Reading education in the USA  Phonics  Whole language  Dick and Jane  National Council of Teachers of English  NCLB  Family literacy  Adolescent literacy Defining literacy Functional illiteracy  Critical literacy Literacy internationally International Reading Association  List of countries by literacy rate  Literacy in India  International Literacy Day  List of Chinese administrative divisions by illiteracy rate Major contributors to literacy Frank Laubach  Paulo Freire  Griffith Jones  Marie Clay Related concepts Agricultural literacy  Aliteracy  Asemic writing   Computer literacy  Cultural literacy  Dyslexia  Diaspora literacy  Ecological literacy  Electracy  Emotional literacy  Financial literacy  Health literacy  Information literacy  Information and media literacy  Literacy test  Media literacy  Mental health literacy  Mental literacy  New literacies  Numeracy  Oracy  Orality  Oral literature  Postliterate society  Racial literacy  Scientific literacy  Statistical literacy  Technological literacy  Transliteracy  Visual literacy  Writing system