Written Languages

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|caption=Rosetta Stone
 
|caption=Rosetta Stone
 
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Writing dates back to approximately the 4th millennium BC, and marks the boundary between "prehistoric" and "historic" times.
 
Writing dates back to approximately the 4th millennium BC, and marks the boundary between "prehistoric" and "historic" times.
  
Written language generally consists of a set of symbols (alphabetic, ideographic, or other) which represents an underlying language (usually derived from a [[Spoken Languages|spoken language]]) and is in turn given a physical or electronic representation as marks on a medium (such as [[paper]]) or digitally-encoded characters via a [[Character Encoding]].  Physical-media written language can also be digitized as [[graphics]].  The process of converting an image of written text into digitized characters (for further processing or indexing) is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
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Written language generally consists of a set of symbols (alphabetic, ideographic, or other) which represents an underlying language (usually derived from a [[Spoken Languages|spoken language]]) and is in turn given a physical or electronic representation as marks on a medium (such as [[paper]]) or digitally-encoded characters via a [[character encoding]].  Physical-media written language can also be digitized as [[graphics]].  The process of converting an image of written text into digitized characters (for further processing or indexing) is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
  
 
One should keep in mind the distinction between the abstract characters of a writing system and the specific "glyphs" that may represent them visually; the latter can vary by font style and exist in a variety of printed and handwritten versions.  Just what is a "separate character" versus a stylistic variation on one can be a somewhat arbitrary distinction; the letters "i" and "j" were at one point considered variations on a single letter of the Latin alphabet, while there continues to be controversy over which characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems should be considered distinct.
 
One should keep in mind the distinction between the abstract characters of a writing system and the specific "glyphs" that may represent them visually; the latter can vary by font style and exist in a variety of printed and handwritten versions.  Just what is a "separate character" versus a stylistic variation on one can be a somewhat arbitrary distinction; the letters "i" and "j" were at one point considered variations on a single letter of the Latin alphabet, while there continues to be controversy over which characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems should be considered distinct.
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== Miscellaneous ==
 
== Miscellaneous ==
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* [[CAVE Language]]
 
* [[Gregg shorthand]]
 
* [[Gregg shorthand]]
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* [[Stenotype]]
  
 
== Other things expressed in writing ==
 
== Other things expressed in writing ==
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* [[Date and time formats]]
 
* [[Date and time formats]]
* [[Hindu-Arabic numerals]] (used nearly universally in Western culture)
 
* [[Mathematical notation]]
 
 
* [[Musical notation]]
 
* [[Musical notation]]
* [[Roman numerals]]
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** [[Drum tablature]]
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** [[Guitar tablatures]]
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** ''(See also [[Audio and Music]])''
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* [[Numeric and counting systems]]
  
 
== Specific formalized types of written (or drawn) matter ==
 
== Specific formalized types of written (or drawn) matter ==
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* [http://thefire.org/article/16392.html Dixie State University bans Greek letters from organization names]
 
* [http://thefire.org/article/16392.html Dixie State University bans Greek letters from organization names]
 
* [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/the-unread-the-mystery-of-the-voynich-manuscript.html The Unread: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript]
 
* [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/07/the-unread-the-mystery-of-the-voynich-manuscript.html The Unread: The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript]
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* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-26198471 Breakthrough over 600-year-old mystery manuscript]
 
* [http://the-dimka.livejournal.com/6645.html Codex Seraphinianus]
 
* [http://the-dimka.livejournal.com/6645.html Codex Seraphinianus]
 
* [http://boingboing.net/2013/11/05/the-box-of-crazy-amazing.html Another weird codex, allegedly found by the trash]
 
* [http://boingboing.net/2013/11/05/the-box-of-crazy-amazing.html Another weird codex, allegedly found by the trash]
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* [http://mentalfloss.com/article/27476/ray-cats-artificial-moons-and-atomic-priesthood-how-government-plans-protect-our Discussion of how to label atomic waste to be understandable by distant-future generations]
 
* [http://mentalfloss.com/article/27476/ray-cats-artificial-moons-and-atomic-priesthood-how-government-plans-protect-our Discussion of how to label atomic waste to be understandable by distant-future generations]
 
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10620324/How-to-decipher-a-4000-year-old-tax-return.html How to decipher a 4,000-year-old tax return]
 
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10620324/How-to-decipher-a-4000-year-old-tax-return.html How to decipher a 4,000-year-old tax return]
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* [http://kheafield.com/professional/stanford/crawl_paper.pdf N-gram Counts and Language Models from the Common Crawl]
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** [http://statmt.org/ngrams/ Data release]
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* [http://emop.tamu.edu/ Early Modern OCR Project]
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* [http://nlp.cs.berkeley.edu/ocular.shtml Ocular Historical Document Recognition System]
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* [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-secret-codes-that-cartels-use-to-send-orders-from-prison?trk_source=recommended The Secret Codes That Cartel Bosses Use to Send Handwritten Orders from Prison]

Revision as of 00:03, 8 June 2017

File Format
Name Written Languages
Ontology
Released ~4000 BC

Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone

Writing dates back to approximately the 4th millennium BC, and marks the boundary between "prehistoric" and "historic" times.

Written language generally consists of a set of symbols (alphabetic, ideographic, or other) which represents an underlying language (usually derived from a spoken language) and is in turn given a physical or electronic representation as marks on a medium (such as paper) or digitally-encoded characters via a character encoding. Physical-media written language can also be digitized as graphics. The process of converting an image of written text into digitized characters (for further processing or indexing) is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

One should keep in mind the distinction between the abstract characters of a writing system and the specific "glyphs" that may represent them visually; the latter can vary by font style and exist in a variety of printed and handwritten versions. Just what is a "separate character" versus a stylistic variation on one can be a somewhat arbitrary distinction; the letters "i" and "j" were at one point considered variations on a single letter of the Latin alphabet, while there continues to be controversy over which characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing systems should be considered distinct.

While writing is, in its basic form, a visual medium, various non-visual representations also exist, such as the tactile code of Braille and the auditory Morse code. These are different "file formats" for the purpose of this site, but they map onto underlying writing systems which are common to varied representations of the same language.

Another thing that can vary across writing systems is whether writing is from left-to-right or right-to-left, or sometimes top-to-bottom.

Alphabetic systems

Non-alphabetic systems

Miscellaneous

Other things expressed in writing

In addition to those representing the sounds or words of a human language, written communication sometimes uses other symbols and systems to express things like numbers or dates, in systems that can vary culturally or be internationally standardized, sometimes independently of what language the document is in.

Specific formalized types of written (or drawn) matter

Links and references

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