The Art Of Writing
The art of writing has evolved throughout the centuries. What started as pictograms telling a story has been transformed to modern creative writing, journalism, poetry, and non-fiction. As writing developed, various writing styles emerged often in response to world events.
Initial writing was in the form of pictures drawn inside caves. The pictures depicted scenes about hunting. Gradually, picture forms called pictographs were drawn to represent specific words. These were used to record the person’s possessions. Pictographs led to the development of Cuneiform which was a written language that used symbols to represent syllables of words.
In Egypt, writing took the form of hieroglyphics which were stylized pictures that often showed scenes regarding everyday life and cultural status. The hieroglyphs were used to represent sounds that are combined to make words. Therefore, hieroglyphics became a crude alphabet.
The Phoenician alphabet was the precursor to the Greek, Hebrew, and Roman alphabets. Writing surfaces included walls, clay tablets, pottery, and papyrus parchments or scrolls. As early as the fifth century, monks copied and ornately decorated books. These books, which were often scriptures, have become known as illuminated manuscripts.
In the late Middle Ages, studying at a university became a popular trend. With this new emphasis on advanced education, books were much more in demand. For the first time, copies of non-religious books were necessary. Students would either copy books by hand or pay someone to copy books for them.
The invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century meant that books could be mass produced. The organization of book distribution was a gradual process. Gradually, the printing press fostered the growth and development of the field of publishing.
Handwritten news sheets were distributed in Venice in the sixteenth century. Novels first became popular in the mid-eighteenth century. With the growth of the middle class in Europe, people had some disposable income that they could spend on literature.
The printing press allowed people to publish pamphlets and posters to share ideas and persuade others to act on the information. A persuasive writing style is still common today with use in commercials, commentaries, editorials, and some websites.
Poetry is a form of creative writing that predates the novel. Aristotle wrote about poetry and described three poetry genres including the comic, tragic, and epic poems. The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno are examples of poetry in classic literature.
Many writing jobs today reflect the changes in technology that has made writing available to everyone through the Internet. Bloggers, website content writers, journalists, and ebook authors use the world wide web as their platform to deliver their messages.
Traditional media like books and newspapers still thrive, though many newspapers have made drastic cuts to survive. Writing jobs within these forms of writing include editors, reporters, writers, and proofreaders. Many people cherish traditional forms of writing as if the electronic forms do not represent the art of writing as well.
The art of writing can mean different things to different people. Some people may appreciate the clarity and form of technical writing. Others may consider personal examples like a love poem from a spouse or the short story written by a child to be superior examples of the art of writing. Whether the person prizes only classic literature and poetry or embraces the latest best seller, writing is a part of our lives in many different forms.