A History of Parentheses
We use them every day to add an aside or crack a digital smile, but have you ever wondered where parentheses come from? From their origins as a 14th-century scribal…
Tag: history of writing
The Papyrus Revolution: How a Plant Built an Empire
Before the internet, before the printing press, there was papyrus. This humble reed from the Nile wasn't just ancient paper; it was a revolutionary linguistic technology that allowed Egypt to…
The Secret Code of Scribes
Before the printing press, scribes used a secret code of symbols and shortcuts to write faster and save precious parchment. This lost art of scribal abbreviations, a kind of medieval…
The Logic of Blissymbols
Born from the horrors of war, Blissymbols was a universal language designed for peace, built on pure logic. This post explores how this unique pictographic system combines simple shapes to…
The Lost Art of Shorthand: A Language of Speed
Before audio recorders, a unique form of writing captured speech at the speed of thought. This article delves into the lost art of shorthand, exploring the clever linguistic principles behind…
The World’s First Word Processor
Before 'cut and paste' existed on a screen, there was the Friden Flexowriter, a revolutionary machine that used punched paper tape to edit text. Discover the story of this forgotten…
Carved in Stone, Read on the Edge: Unlocking Ogham, Ireland’s Ancient Alphabet of Lines
Forget runes and hieroglyphs; journey to ancient Ireland to uncover Ogham, a script written not on a page but on the very edge of stone. This unique alphabet of lines…
From Chisel to Stylus: How the Tools of Writing Forged Our Alphabets
Have you ever wondered why an 'A' looks the way it does? The answer lies not in linguistics, but in the physical tools that shaped it. This article explores how…
Reading the Knots: Quipu, the Inca’s Mysterious 3D Writing System
What if writing wasn't flat on a page, but a three-dimensional web of information you could hold in your hands? The Inca Empire's Quipu, an intricate system of knotted, colorful…
The Mystery of Rongorongo: Easter Island’s Enigmatic Script
Rongorongo, the written script of the native Rapanui people of Easter Island, stands as one of the most intriguing and mysterious undeciphered scripts in human...
Old Hungarian Runes: An Insight into Magyar Prehistory
Introduction The Old Hungarian script, often termed as “runic” due to its superficial resemblance to the Germanic runes, offers a fascinating insight into the early...
From Quills to Keyboards: The Evolution of English Writing
Our story begins in a time much different from our own; a period when English writing was a privilege of the educated and the clergy,...
Sequoyah and the Birth of Written Cherokee
In a world where written language is commonplace, it’s easy to forget the profound impact of developing a writing system. One of the most extraordinary...
Cracking the Code: The Fascinating Journey of Deciphering Hieroglyphs
From the enigmatic scribbles painted on cave walls by early humans, to the complex codes employed by modern computer programmers, humans have always had an...
Picturing the World: An Introduction to Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Egyptian Hieroglyphs, an amalgamation of pictorial symbols, is one of the earliest known writing systems in human history. Used extensively during the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman...