Writing system

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• published: 26 Aug 2014
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A writing system is an organized, regular method (typically standardized) of information storage and transfer for the communication of messages (expressing thoughts or ideas) in a language by visually (or possibly tactilely) encoding and decoding (known as writing and reading) with a set of signs or symbols, both known generally as characters (with the set collectively referred to as a 'script'). These characters, often including letters and numbers, are usually recorded onto a durable medium such as paper or electronic storage/display, although non-durable methods may also be used, such as writing in sand or skywriting. The general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category. In the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters (basic written symbols or graphemes) of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters (or letter pair/groups) represent phonemes (basic significant sounds) of the spoken language. A syllabary typically correlates a symbol to a syllable (which can be a pairing or group of phonemes, and are considered the building blocks of words). In a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme or semantic unit (which themselves can be pairings or groups of syllables). Other categories include abjads (which is an alphabet where vowels are not indicated at all) and abugidas, also called alphasyllabaries (where vowels are shown by diacritics or other modification of consonants). A system's category can often be determined just by identifying the number of symbols used within the system. Alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. This video is targeted to blind users. Attribution: Article text available under CC-BY-SA Creative Commons image source in video