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We are well accustomed to the written word as a primary method of communication in our culture. Its primary elements, the characters of the modern alphabet, were once quite literal symbols of everyday objects which were gradually abstracted to the letters of the alphabet. While cave paintings, dating as far back as 20,000 B.C. are the first evidence of recorded pictures, true written communication is thought to have been developed some 17,000 years later by the Summerians, around 3500 B.C. They are known to have recorded stories and preserved records using simple drawings of everyday objects, called pictograms.

As civilizations become more advanced, they experienced the need to communicate more complex concepts. Around 3100 B.C., Egyptian hieroglyphics incorporated symbols representing thoughts or ideas, called ideograms, allowing for the expression of more abstract concepts than the more literal pictograms. A symbol for an ox could mean food, for example, or the symbol of a setting sun combined with the symbol for a man could communicate old age or death.

By 1600 B.C., the Phoenicians had developed symbols for spoken sounds, called phonograms. For example, their symbol for ox, which they called aleph, was used to represent the spoken sound “A” and beth, their symbol for house, represented the sound “B”. In addition to sounds, phonograms could also represent words. Today, our own alphabet contains many such phonograms: % for percent, ? for question, and $ for dollars.

It is the Phoenicians who are generally credited with developing the first true alphabet— a set of symbols representing spoken sounds, that could be combined to represent spoken language. They traded with many cultures, spreading their alphabet throughout the Western world. Around 1,000 B.C., the Phoenician alphabet was adapted by the Greeks, who developed the art of handwriting in several styles. The word “alphabet” comes from the first two Greek letters alpha and beta.

Several hundred years later, the Romans used the Greek alphabet as the basis for the uppercase alphabet that we know today. They refined the art of handwriting, fashioning several distinctive styles of lettering which they used for different purposes. They scribed a rigid, formal script for important manuscripts and official documents and a quicker, more informal style for letters and routine types of writing. By A.D. 100, the Romans had developed a fast growing book industry and, as Roman handwriting continued to evolve, lower case letters and rough forms of punctuation were gradually added.