Writing

The Emperor’s Alphabet: The Story of Phags-pa Script

In the 13th century, Kublai Khan commissioned a single, official script to unite the vast, multilingual Mongol Empire. The result…

3 weeks ago

The Cuneiform Stylus: The Tool That Wrote the Word

The world's first writing system, cuneiform, owes its distinctive wedge-shaped appearance to a surprisingly simple tool. This post explores how…

3 weeks ago

Reading Right-to-Left: How Scripts Shape the Brain

Does the direction you read in change how you perceive the world? This article delves into the surprising science of…

3 weeks ago

The Alphabet That Failed

In the 1960s, a radical new alphabet for English was born, bankrolled by the will of playwright George Bernard Shaw.…

3 weeks ago

The Scribe’s Shortcut: A History of the Tilde (~)

That familiar squiggle, the tilde (~), is more than just a decoration on the Spanish 'ñ' or a casual emoji.…

3 weeks ago

The Vai Script: A Dreamed-Up Alphabet

In the 1830s, an illiterate Vai man in West Africa named Momolu Duwalu Bukele had a vivid dream where he…

3 weeks ago

The Scribe’s Mistake: Errors in Medieval Texts

Before the printing press, every book was a handmade original, and every scribe made mistakes. Far from being mere blemishes,…

3 weeks ago

10 Endangered Scripts to Watch in 2025

Long before a language falls silent, its unique writing system can fade into obscurity. This post explores ten beautiful and…

3 weeks ago

From Thought to Ink: The Neurology of Handwriting

Ever marvel at how a fleeting thought transforms into ink on a page? This article delves into the incredible neurology…

3 weeks ago

Clay, Papyrus, Vellum: How Writing Surfaces Shaped Language

Before keyboards or even paper, the very material a scribe wrote on dictated our linguistic conventions. From the wedge-shaped efficiency…

3 weeks ago

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