Welcome!

Tablet: The Writing Systems Database seeks to provide students and scholars with a searchable database on the writing systems of the world. Using peer-reviewed scholarly resources, we strive to provide the major characteristics of each script system in the world, both those in current use and historic scripts.

What is Writing?

“Humankind is defined by language; but civilization is defined by writing.” --Peter T. Daniels

Writing is a word with many definitions, but used here in a linguistic sense for the study of various scripts, we will use Henry Rogers' definition that writing is “the use of graphic marks to represent specific linguistic utterances”. A writing system is a system of graphic symbols used to represent a language.

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