Writing

Letter (from Old High German Scriban, from Latin: scribere with the stylus to carve on a blackboard ) refers to the recording of characters, letters, numbers or musical notes. Its counterpart is the reading, the process to absorb and understand any written information and ideas. The letter is a basic cultural technique. The history of writing is inextricably linked to the history of writing.

Letter referred to in the transferred meaning also the creative process of writing of lyrical and poetic texts, the so-called creative writing. The result of creative writing is the literature. The surface and deep structure of texts may differ from the actual expression; this is the subject of literary studies.

Not only the text, the form of writing can be an expression of artistic creation, in calligraphy. Each writer has his own, more or less legible handwriting; this may be the subject of a Schriftvergleichung. A program created by handwriting plant called manuscript. The personal nature (the hand of an artist or author ) is called style. It influences the understanding of the text.

To write are a medium and a tool necessary (see Manually writing).

Even in ancient times was a variety of techniques in use, such as the Einmeißeln in stone, the carving in clay and writing with ink on palm leaves, papyrus, parchment and paper. Until the invention of printing, writing was the only way to retain language on a medium. The typewriter and the computer or word processing have revolutionized writing.

In ancient times, was the ability to write so valuable that a whole profession, the writer, lived it. This continued in many parts of the world until the introduction of primary schools and general compulsory education, which made it possible to teach broad strata of the population in reading and writing.

In the modern knowledge society, the inability to write ( and read) a fundamental obstacle Those who can not are called illiterate. Industrial nations achieve a literacy rate of 95 % and more. A lack of physical conditions for writing can be compensated by technical aids such as dictation systems.

Difficult to offset are psychological causes that make it difficult or impossible for learning to write, these include spelling ( dyslexia ) and Agrafie. A partial or total inability to write is not necessarily accompanied by other intellectual limitations of a person.