What is included with this book?
Author Biography and Acknowledgements | p. iv |
Introduction | p. 1 |
What is writing? | p. 3 |
The purpose of writing | |
Invention or evolution? | |
Transmitting stored information | |
The two most stable components | |
Non-linguistic forms of writing | p. 16 |
The power of pictures and signs | |
Narrative pictures | |
Objects | |
Tallies | |
Archival records | |
Property marks | |
Memory aids | |
Modern picture writing | |
The introduction of language elements | p. 30 |
The riddle of the rebus | |
The emergence of the rebus in objects, proverbs and ritualistic memory aids | |
Sign languages | |
The failure of purely phonetic scripts | |
The elusive phoneme | |
Extinct scripts: the infrastructure of palace and temple | p. 39 |
Mesopotamia | |
Ancient Mediterranean forms of writings | |
Peru | |
Egypt | |
Mesoamerica | |
Indus Valley civilisation | |
The common origin of some contemporary writing systems | p. 65 |
Semitic scripts | |
The alphabets | |
The special place of certain writing systems | p. 81 |
Indian forms of writing | |
Chinese forms of writing | |
The political success of unsuitable writing systems | p. 92 |
The Chinese derived scripts of Korea and Japan | |
Indian script forms in Southeast Asia, the Himalayan countries and Central Asia | |
The success of cuneiform | |
The Arabic script and the Roman alphabet | |
Script inventors and script inventions | p. 105 |
Hangul--the script of the people | |
Scripts invented to aid the spread of Christianity | |
Scripts as part of a self-respect movement | |
Rewards and problems of decipherment | p. 118 |
Calligraphy--a corporate logo? | p. 126 |
Chinese calligraphy | |
Islamic calligraphy | |
Western calligraphy | |
What is a book? | p. 141 |
Shape and material | |
Bookbinding | |
Illustration and illumination | |
The danger of books | |
Modern technology and the talking book | |
Printing, the writing masters and the Internet | p. 159 |
What is literacy? | p. 171 |
Benefits and pitfalls of literacy | |
Functional literacy | |
Oral literacy | |
Information overload? | |
Some final thoughts | p. 184 |
Index | p. 185 |
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved. |
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