Typography And The Printing Press

Each of the four civilizations had a system of writing. The first form of writing was developed by the Sumerians from the Tigris-Euphrates River, called cuneiform. It had about 300 symbols and was used to mark property boundaries and charts of major constellations. Usually, a wedge-shaped stylus is used on soft clay to produce cuneiform symbols. Cuneiform was later diffused into other following cultures. The Nile River Egyptians developed a different form of writing to help maintain the Egyptian empire. It was pictographic and combined with sound signs to produce hieroglyphics. Most of their writing was done papyrus, which was a fine paper produced from the stem of a water plant. The Indus River also invented their own unique alphabet, however, to this day, it has not been deciphered yet. The most sophisticated form of writing emerged from the Chinese. They came up with characters that symbolized the idea of a thing, naming it

In Ancient China, they developed a writing system for preservation. In China, people would use logograms, which are symbols that represent a word or a meaning.In the early days of the ancient Chinese civilization, people would write on oracle bone or tortoise shell.In Ancient India, writing systems were developed for recording data and information. The Indus script used signs and words and it was written from right to left. By 1800 BCE, the Indus valley civilizations started to fall and writing were often used anymore. Ancient Egyptians started to developed a writing system called, hieroglyphics because they needed a way to record important information. They believed that recording data and communicate information about government and religion was essential. Scribes were only ones to write in hieroglyphics and were written from left to right or top to bottom. In Mesopotamia, people started developing a writing system to information. Mesopotamia created a writing system called, cuneiform. Mesopotamian scribes would record important dates and event, and position of the stars. These ancient civilizations started to create their own writing system to record history and communicate information.

To start, the Sumerians invented cuneiform, which began the path to written language in the future. Cuneiform was the first written language. It was invented over 5000 years ago! (Doc. 1). They used a stylus to make imprints for writing. Written on the clay tablets it was used to keep records, document business

Typography is a tool for creating an emphasis on a page through readability. It can direct the reader where certain things are on a page that; acting like a map. Every reader is subconsciously

In 1436 Johannes Gutenberg invented the Printing Press, which had a major impact on both the Renaissance and printing today, however there other movable type systems invented before Gutenberg’s Printing

It is known not for sure if Sumerian writing was the first to be developed, but it is the oldest. First, scribed by pictures then later by wedges and straight on clay tablets. This form

The communication technology of writing is thought to have emerged in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, from 3500 -3000 BCE. This form of writing was Cuneiform, which consists of making specific marks in clay with a reed tool. Cuneiform was invented due to the long distance communication needed for trade. Meanwhile, the writing system of the Egyptians, or Hieroglyphics, was in use before 3150 BCE. Although disputed, hieroglyphics are thought to be based on cuneiform. Therefore, cuneiform is the first written language that we know.

In this chapter, Diamond discusses writing and the causes behind its development. Diamond explains that there were three basic strategies used to create a writing system in which signs would be used to represent sounds, words, or syllables. Few of these writing system were independently created while other were influenced by existing systems due to the difficulty of creating writing and the existence of nearby writing systems. One independently created writing the Sumerian cuneiform started with pictures depicting objects then words and was further developed when phonetic signs were used to write letters, syllables, abstract words, and determinatives. These writing systems developed as long as a society

writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken language. It is thought that human beings developed language c. 35,000 BCE as evidenced by cave paintings from the period of the Cro-Magnon Man (c. 50,000-30,000 BCE) which appear to express concepts concerning daily life. These images suggest a language because, in some instances, they seem to tell a story (say, of a hunting expedition in which specific events occurred) rather than being simply pictures of animals and people. Written language, however, does not emerge until its invention in Sumer, southern Mesopotamia, c. 3500 -3000 BCE. This early writing was called cuneiform and consisted of making specific marks in wet clay with a reed implement. The writing system of the Egyptians was already in use before the rise of the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 BCE) and is thought to have developed from Mesopotamian cuneiform (though this theory is disputed) and came to be known as heiroglyphics.

A short time later, the ancient Egyptians invented hieroglyphics consisting of small pictures forming phrases. The phonetic writing system was invented by the ancient Greeks. It was later used by the Romans and then was greatly developed by the Sumerians. In China people started writing using oracle bones. The alphabet was later invented using a mixture of all of these ancient writings.

Considered one of the most influential typographers in history, John Baskerville made a significant mark on the world of print and type founding. Although considered a failure at printing during his lifetime he produced

Without the usage of ancient writing, we would know nothing about history, which makes an ancient writing systems so important. The first type of writing originated in Mesopotamia, but the writing featured will cover ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the ancient Greek alphabet, and the ancient Chinese writing systems. These written languages originated around their area without the knowledge of other known writing systems. The Egyptians had hieroglyphics, while the Greeks had the Phoenician script, and the Chinese had pictographs and characters to represent words for writing systems. Without these early writing systems, some languages would have not existed today.

Throughout the three Scholastic articles about different forms of writing the reader learns that writing, reading, and printing changed a lot overtime. We learned that without the alphabet we wouldn’t have a let of things in our lifetime like computers, phones, and personal computers. The printing press helped spread knowledge in books because how much easier it was to make books. And of course there wouldn’t be books easy enough to read without the alphabet. Thanks to the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and the Romans we have one of the greatest things in the world basically used for everything.

To begin, the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia introduced the first forms of written language-Cuneiform. The beginning of writing was an essential tool that transferred thoughts and speech into text. It was extremely important and allowed for the beginning of record keeping of all sorts. “At this point, writing was used only for record keeping, and thus only concrete words(nouns) such as “ox”,”grain” and “sheep” were needed. As society became more complex, the language evolved enabling signs to be used…and eventually abstract thoughts “(Newman 44). The world came to know a unique way of expressing thoughts and learned to convey messages through writing. From then on, records could be kept, history and stories could be recorded and abstract thinking could shine

Is the development of the writing system the most important factor that led to the rise of a civilization? How does our ancestor learned to write when school is not even available? Understand that writing system that I am referring is not the average of using tools such as ink and paper, but more of creative tool that has developed over time. In this essay, I will cover seven points on the importantance of a writing system in the ancient civilization.