Chapter 11 focuses on one of the most important events of the last 5,000 years: the development of writing. Writing is defined as a system of more or less permanent marks used to represent an utterance in such a way that it can be recovered more or less the same way without intervention. Writing is distinguished from ideograms that represent things or concepts directly. Readers are introduced to alphabets in which, though imperfectly, each letter represents one sound, syllabaries which represent the syllable, abjads, in which, typically, only consonants are written, and abujidas, in which each consonant is represented with a basic vowel. The chapter includes examples for each type of writing from many different languages. The history of writing is summarized, from its beginnings in Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica, to modern day writing in different parts of the world. Each new concept introduced is amply illustrated with images from different types of writing systems, and readers are encouraged to try to understand how reading should proceed in each case.

places emoji within the context of the evolution of language and communications technology. Since language first evolved some one hundred thousand years ago, allowing people to communicate complex ideas to each other, each new technology has extended its reach. The last few decades have seen the speed of technological change increase rapidly, with the computer, the internet and mobile devices making communication across distances ever easier and cheaper. But these inventions have also presented challenges for how we communicate, especially around the important issue of empathy and emotional distance. Various innovations, from punctuation marks to emoticons, have been used in an attempt to provide solutions for these challenges. In explaining the trajectory of this evolution, the chapter looks at how emoji relate to and differ from earlier forms of written language, such as hieroglyphics, and why they’ve emerged to become so popular at this particular juncture in history.