Writing
Writing is the act of creating a persistent, usually visual representation of language on a surface. As a structured system of communication, writing is also known as written language. Historically, written languages have emerged as a way to record corresponding spoken languages. While the use of language is universal across human societies, most spoken languages are not written. A particular set of symbols, called a script, as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language, is known as a writing system. In some rare cases, writing may be tactile rather than visual.
The cognitive and social activity of writing involves neuropsychological and physical processes whose physical output is also called writing : a series of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Reading is the activity of encountering a text and construing its symbols.
In general, writing systems do not constitute languages in and of themselves, but rather a durable means of representing language such that it can be understood by people at a later time. While not all languages use a writing system, those that do can complement and extend the capacities of spoken language, transmitting it across space and storing it for future reading. Writing can also change people's relationships with the knowledge they acquire, since it allows humans to externalize their thinking in forms that are easier to reflect on, process more slowly, elaborate on, reconsider, and revise.
Tools, materials, and motivations to write
Any instance of writing involves a complex interaction among available tools, intentions, cultural customs, cognitive routines, genres, tacit and explicit knowledge, and the constraints and limitations of the systems used. Writing implements used to make physical inscriptions include fingers, styluses, ink brushes, pencils, pens, and many styles of lithography; writing surfaces on which inscriptions may be made include stone tablets, clay tablets, bamboo slips, papyrus, wax tablets, vellum, parchment, paper, copperplate, and slate.The typewriter, as well as the digital word processor, allow individual writers to produce visually consistent text mechanically via a keyboard.
Advancements in natural language processing and natural language generation have resulted in software capable of producing certain forms of formulaic writing without the direct involvement of humans after initial configuration or, more commonly, to be used to support writing processes such as generating initial drafts, producing feedback with the help of a rubric, copy-editing, and helping translation.
Motivations and purposes
Historically, writing emerged to address the needs of societies growing in economic and social complexity. Once developed, potential applications included tracking produce and other wealth, recording history, maintaining culture, codifying knowledge through curricula as well as lists of texts deemed to contain foundational knowledge or artistic value. Aids to administration included legal codes, census records, contracts, deeds of ownership, taxation, trade agreements, and treaties. As Charles Bazerman explains, the "marking of signs on stones, clay, paper, and now digital memories—each more portable and rapidly traveling than the previous—provided means for increasingly coordinated and extended action as well as memory across larger groups of people over time and space." Further innovations included more uniform, predictable, and widely dispersed legal systems, the distribution of accessible versions of sacred texts, and furthering practices of scientific inquiry and knowledge management, all of which were largely reliant on portable and easily reproducible forms of inscribed language. The history of writing is co-extensive with uses of writing and the elaboration of activity systems that give rise to and circulate writing.Individual motivations for writing include the ability to operate beyond the limitations of one's own memory, dissemination of ideas and coordination, creativity and storytelling, maintaining kinship and other social networks, business correspondence regarding goods and services, and life writing.
The global spread of digital communication systems such as email and social media has made writing an increasingly important feature of daily life, where these systems mix with older technologies like paper, pencils, whiteboards, printers, and copiers. Substantial amounts of everyday writing characterize most workplaces in developed countries. In many occupations, written documentation is not only the main deliverable but also the mode of work itself. Even in occupations not typically associated with writing, routine records management has most employees writing at least some of the time.
Contemporary uses
Some professions are typically associated with writing, such as literary authors, journalists, and technical writers, but writing is pervasive in most modern forms of work, civic participation, household management, and leisure activities.Business and finance
Writing permeates everyday commerce. For example, in the course of an afternoon, a wholesaler might receive a written inquiry about the availability of a product line, then communicate with suppliers and fabricators through work orders and purchase agreements, correspond via email to affirm shipping availability with a drayage company, write an invoice, and request proof of receipt in the form of a written signature. At a larger scale, modern systems of finances, banking, and business rest on written documentsincluding regulations, policies, and procedures; the creation of reports and other monitoring documents to make, evaluate, and provide accountability for decisions and operations; the creation and maintenance of records; internal written communications within departments to coordinate work; written communications that comprise work products presented to other departments and to clients; and external communications to clients and the public. Business and financial organizations also rely on many written legal documents, such as contracts, reports to government agencies, tax records, and accounting reports. Financial institutions and markets that hold, transmit, trade, insure, or regulate holdings for clients or other institutions are particularly dependent on written records to maintain the integrity of their roles.Governance and law
Many modern systems of government are organized and sanctified through written constitutions at the national and sometimes state or other organizational levels. Written rules and procedures typically guide the operations of the various branches, departments, and other bodies of government, which regularly produce reports and other documents as work products and to account for their actions. In addition to legislatures that draft and pass laws, these laws are administered by an executive branch, which can present further written regulations specifying the laws and how they are carried out. Governments at different levels also typically maintain written records on citizens concerning identities, life events such as births, deaths, marriages, and divorces, the granting of licenses for controlled activities, criminal charges, traffic offences, and other penalties small and large, and tax liability and payments.Science and scholarship
Research undertaken in academic disciplines is typically published as articles in journals or within book-length monographs. Arguments, experiments, observational data, and other evidence collated in the course of research is represented in writing, and serves as the basis for later work. Data collection and drafting of manuscripts may be supported by grants, which usually require proposals establishing the value of such work and the need for funding. The data and procedures are also typically collected in lab notebooks or other preliminary files. Preprints of potential publications may also be presented at academic or disciplinary conferences or on publicly accessible web servers to gain peer feedback and build interest in the work. Prior to official publication, these documents are typically read and evaluated by peer review from appropriate experts, who determine whether the work is of sufficient value and quality to be published.Publication does not establish the claims or findings of work as being authoritatively true, only that they are worth the attention of other specialists. As the work appears in review articles, handbooks, textbooks, or other aggregations, and others cite it in the advancement of their own research, does it become codified as contingently reliable knowledge.