For many people across the world today the written word is an integral part of daily life, used to maintain relationships between family and friends, to access services or to conduct business in a work setting. It is so common that it can easily escape our notice. In urban environments, in particular, we are surrounded by written text. Writing is ubiquitous, and it is also more mobile now than at any point during the past. Apart from the occasional obstacle, we expect to be able to connect with others by smartphone wherever we are. Our writing devices travel with us, words and messages combine with sound, with still and moving images on the screens of our handheld devices, and we can keep multiple threads of written conversations going. This is one way that writing allows us to reach out from our immediate location. And because the written word remains visible, we are also able to communicate across time. It’s not an exaggeration, then, to say that writing enables us to escape from the limitations of time and space – perhaps that fact alone seems enough to underline the significance of writing. But all this is by no means new. In all probability, writing was first invented somewhere between 5,000 and 5,500 years ago and some of its basic functions were surprisingly quick to develop.¹

In order to understand the unique role that it plays in our contemporary lives, I want to identify what is distinctive about written communication, how it conveys information and helps us to make meaning. Writing is one form of human communication, and I want to show the ways in which it is woven into the fabric of everyday life and how it combines with other systems of representation and communication. This chapter is principally concerned with locating and defining writing in the context of communication in general, and in the more specific domain of human communication. I will be emphasizing the linguistic basis of writing systems, examining their underlying characteristics, how their invention works as a representational resource and how they are intimately connected with social, material and cultural conditions. In order to achieve some clarity about writing, the power of writing and why writing still matters, we need to be clear about some basic concepts, to establish some terms of reference and to find a language for talking about writing. Writing is many things, as we shall see, but in this chapter, I show that, in essence, it is a system of visual communication that uses symbols that have a particular relationship to the world.

1.1 Communication

At a café, in Cardigan, I watch a young man putting up specials on a chalkboard. His neat hand leaves a trail of white letters in a language I can read – English that is, not Welsh. The chalkboard is on a wall that everyone can see, opposite the entrance to the café, a highly visible prompt for what’s on offer. It relieves the staff of the burden of remembering all the detail and is a handy go-between when you order (does that come with chips?). The specials board takes its place in a chain of events involving multiple interactions between people and things, between cooks and knives, and various ingredients warmed or grilled. A chain of events that results in the appearance of a plate of food and culminates at the point of payment. These events all make sense because they are part of the familiar cultural pattern of being a customer in a privately owned space that provides a service in exchange for payment. In their particular form and detail they constitute a social practice involving, amongst other things, interactions between people and texts, arrangements of furniture – counters, chairs and tables, the movement of things like trays, mugs and dirty dishes, food preparation, cooking, plating-up and table service. And within these routines, writing has an important instrumental role to play – it participates in, and to some extent, it shapes what happens. I use this example to draw attention to the way in which writing is embedded. It plays a recognizable role in events as they unfold. But there is a point, if we can isolate it, at which the specials board is being written, just as there is a point, or points, at which the specials board is read. This is the point – or perhaps one of several points – at which written communication comes to the fore. It will help, for the moment, if we pause and focus our attention on the moment of communication. It will help in our understanding of writing, even if we must eventually ‘press play’ and see it as part of a more complex interweaving of actions, interactions, transactions and affects.²

Communication, in the most fundamental sense, involves the movement of meaningful information – in the café, that’s information about the food on offer. And communication requires two or more parties: one to send a message and another to receive or interpret that message. This basic model underlines how communication works to establish a relationship or interaction, and as a basic definition it works; but in practice, of course, things are far more complex. For a start, communication describes a very broad range of relationships and interactions – interactions between parts of an organism, bits of a system or members of a species or entity. There are broader applications of this word ‘communication’, too. Communication can form a bridge between different organisms or systems. As any pet owner will tell you, there is no shortage of cross-species communication out there, and it doesn’t all involve humans! Communication also stretches well beyond the animal kingdom. Take recent developments in mycology as an example. Here scientists have highlighted the complexity of information exchange between fungi – and they’ve also shown how that information is taken up and used by other organisms such as forest trees, for example, in responding to the challenges of disease or environmental change.³ Even trees communicate with one another. The myriad of forms of communication that surround us all involve different processes of encoding and decoding information, and the majority of these are naturally occurring. However you think about it, communication is ubiquitous, and it is by no means exclusively human.

Humans, though, are social animals, heavily dependent on collaboration and communication, and their capacity for invention and innovation has often focused on new ways of storing and sharing information. This innovative drive lies behind the invention and development of writing. This is a development that has continued across the centuries from early agricultural societies well into the digital age. Digital technologies may seem to have changed our lives in a way that breaks with the past, but they might just as well be seen as the most recent expression of our urge to communicate with one another (Figure 1.1). A vast infrastructure that links the silicon chips in smartphones to satellites and server farms helps to hold our everyday digital communication in place. We are clearly talking about a complex and sophisticated system. But written communication, whether it appears on paper, in print or on screen is a fundamentally human invention. It doesn’t occur spontaneously, nor does it gradually emerge in infancy, as speech does. It has to be learnt.

Figure 1.1 Technological development extends communication.

(featuring Tom Price’s sculpture Network at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park)⁴

Technological development extends communication in ever newer directions. Push notifications on our smartphones remind us to do things; they attempt to capture our attention and alert us to incoming information, whereas virtual agents like Alexa and Siri listen to us and talk to us – yes, we communicate with machines, too! Behind all of this lies the whole architecture of the Internet which, for all its complexity, is based on machines communicating with each other. The Internet of things that furnishes the smart home with its Ring doorbells, remote heating systems and phone-activated lighting works to extend our communicative reach. As we are all now aware, new developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence take all this to another level. Whereas technologies have always participated in written communication, there are now situations in which we can’t be entirely sure whether we are communicating with another person or a machine.

Whatever your perspective, communication has to be seen as more than human.⁵ It is important to acknowledge this before narrowing the focus down onto human communication and indeed on to one specific, but crucially important, aspect of our communicative repertoire – writing. And just as communication is a much larger category than human–human interaction, so human communication is a much larger topic than writing itself. Their interrelationship is like a set of Russian dolls, sharing important similarities but distinctive and separate forms. Our analytical task here is to focus on one particular aspect of human communication – writing, but as we do this, it is important to realize how it exists in relation to a much broader economy of relationships and practices.

1.2 Writing and Communication

It is neither possible nor desirable to completely disentangle writing from other forms of communication or from lived experience in general, as the example of the specials board at the beginning of Section 1.1 illustrated. Written communication can only ever fully make sense in terms of the world in which it is embedded and to which it always, in some way or another, refers. Writing just can’t be levered apart from human relations or from the long history of its development. The history of writing shows how people have used the materials at hand to record, store, distribute and respond to information. In this sense, writing is, and always has been, both a social and a material affair.

Written words are a form of linguistic communication, and they are dependent on a set of distinctive rules and conventions. As such they have a complex and dynamic relationship with spoken language. The idea that writing is just a visual representation of speech is an oversimplification, since writing always employs a particular notational system (such as an alphabet or set of characters) and specific rules (of spelling and syntax), both of which are governed by their own conventions of representation, variation and combination. Over time, writing has also developed some specific functions, its own stylistic conventions and its own distinctive expressions and genres, and these also distinguish it from spoken language. For example, in contemporary European culture, there is no direct spoken equivalent of a signature, you’re unlikely to wish someone happy birthday using the phrases found in a greeting card or speak to them in the language of a formal letter – and although some written texts like legal statutes and novels can be read aloud, they are certainly not designed with that in mind.

If speech and writing have a complex and dynamic relationship, how might that relationship be described? It’s clearly not a symbiotic relationship since it is quite possible to make sense of a written script without knowing the spoken language it relates to. Experts on ancient Cuneiform writing, scholars of Sanskrit and those familiar with Latin may have an impression or opinion on how words in related languages may have sounded when spoken, but they are not members of a living speech community. Similarly, someone who is a little bit familiar with a language that makes use of the same script as their own can make some headway in reading that language, particularly with some knowledge of its intonation – but that is not the same thing as being able to speak it. A text-based education in French has left me, and many of my generation, reasonably fluent in the written form, but fairly hopeless in everyday conversation. And, in many parts of the world, the official written language is based on a standard variety that not everyone speaks. For example, written Mandarin is related to the language of the Han Chinese, but this may vary quite considerably from what is spoken locally in Guangzhou, Hong Kong or Shanghai. Evidence of what I’ve called the dynamic relationship between spoken and written language is easy to illustrate with reference to Shakespeare. The plays, now dependent on the written form, reflect some of the contours of spoken Elizabethan English – but also, as scholars have been quick to point out, vocabulary and common idioms that seem to first appear in Shakespeare have now found their way into everyday spoken language. This illustrates a sort of two-way relationship between speech and writing. A written language can borrow from spoken language (and vice versa) in a way that is mutually enriching, but the two language systems remain separate in important ways. With these examples in mind, writing might be best described as a semi-autonomous form of linguistic communication with a set of clear distinguishing features – arguably a language in its own right. But there is one crucially important distinguishing feature: writing, unlike speech, has a material presence and a visual form, being made up of more or less durable marks or impressions on a surface or screen.

1.3 Writing and the World

Writing as a visual form has a relation to the world as seen, felt, experienced and imagined. In some schools of thought, this relationship is seen as part of the context of writing. For instance, traffic information, public notices and fingerposts derive their meaning from where they are placed in the environment and are meant to be read in relation to their immediate contextual surroundings. Because writing must be visible, it easily combines with other visual modes of representation. It often appears with still and moving images (think of advertisements and subtitles) and with other notation systems such as numerals, measurements or musical symbols. An interesting feature of contemporary screen-based communication is that it brings together different media to expand the possibilities of meaning making. For example, many of us regularly use multimodal texts – texts that combine writing, visual representation and sound, and we do this on a daily basis.⁶ Frequently visited websites and social media platforms exploit the multimedia possibilities available. Despite its everyday and sometimes banal content, communication through WhatsApp is a good example of the complex blending of voice notes, conversational writing and still and moving images.

Two key points emerge from the discussion so far. Firstly, as I have argued throughout this chapter, we can’t completely disentangle writing from its communicative context – and this includes the world at large as well as other forms and modes of communication. Secondly, we have to be clear that specific rules and conventions apply to writing that distinguish it from speech. This doesn’t mean that they are necessarily formally agreed or even referred to – often they are just implicitly adhered to. But conventions of writing have to be learnt, even if they are not explicitly taught. This learning involves everything from the size and shape of letters or characters and how they combine, through to the structuring of complex texts. Because much of this involves conventions, rather than inviolable laws, there’s always some scope for variation, always some fuzziness around the detail at all levels (hence the seemingly endless arguments on what constitutes proper letter formations or correct grammar). Nor are these conventions unchanging. In fact, the conventions I’m referring to operate rather like a tacit social contract that is continually being refined and renegotiated. Writing in this sense is very much a part of the world that we experience.

Most of the time a fluent reader takes writing at face value – the meaning appears to emerge from the written word with little or no effort at all. To all intents and purposes, this is an automatic process that is only derailed when a particularly complex or poorly worded sentence crops up, when there’s a typographic error or when the reader meets an unfamiliar word – and then only briefly. In all probability, we are hard-wired to make meaning, and so the drive to understand and to make sense of writing takes precedence over the recognition and recall of words and word fragments – those processes normally occur below the threshold of conscious awareness. All of that cognitive work is so well learned and so regularly practised that it is, for many of us, invisible most of the time.

1.4 Writing as a System of Symbols

Reading this page, we can be aware of the rather neat array of black shapes in front of us, we can be aware that they are lined up on a white background and that we follow their lead from left-to-right and top-to-bottom of the page or screen. The way in which these rather strange dark squiggles march across the page in response to my rather clumsy plonking on the keyboard seems like a small miracle, yet this is all a product of well-worn habits of reading and writing that depend on a working, automized familiarity with a system of linguistic symbols – a set or collection of marks that communicate information to the reader – someone who is sufficiently familiar with the conventions of that system. This process is part of the magic of writing, one of the many ways in which someone else’s thoughts and ideas, or ways of doing something, are told, how their imagined worlds or everyday experiences are conveyed, how services are offered, arrangements or agreements reached. All of these can be communicated to us through this rather unusual collection of squiggles. As Aileen Douglas⁷ observes:

In other words, legibility is an essential aspect of written communication. What is written must be legible to the reader; but once it is legible, materiality may fade into the background as meaning becomes foregrounded.

At the heart of this communication process is the way in which specific marks on a visible surface appear on their own or in combination in order to represent words. This is the essential characteristic of a modern writing system. Looking across different writing systems, we might see this in the way the Chinese character 鈴 represents the word ‘ling’ (bell), or in the way that the Arabic word َﻣﺎﺀ stands for ‘maa’ (water). Although these writing systems operate in different ways and have different histories, for the time being it is important to recognize a fundamental principle. That is that the symbols of modern writing systems combine as words, phrases and clauses – as a language rather than a visual representation of things themselves. There is no direct relationship between the word m-o-o-n, as it is written on the page and the beautiful appearance that can light up the night-time sky. You could look at the word for as long as you like, upside down, the right way up, left-to-right or back to front and still not see the thing it refers to. Furthermore, despite the popular idea that Chinese is more pictorial as a language, there’s nothing about 鈴 that rings out of the page to suggest the word bell, just as there is nothing remotely wet about the word َﻣﺎﺀ.

What I referred to as ‘magic’ actually turns out to be a finely tuned system of visually mediated language. Most likely we have forgotten the struggles, hesitations and frustrations of learning to read and write, of mastering a particular code or codes, but this learning, when successful, becomes so automatic that we can attend to the meaning of messages, rather than the system of representation. In the case of descriptive writing we can conjure up people, places and events in our imagination; through a string of text messages, we may be able to work out what’s on our friend’s mind or simply know where and when to meet him. In each case, the message can be imperfectly or inaccurately realized – but perhaps all communication proceeds through a judicious combination of approximation, hypothesis and guesswork. It is perhaps just as well then that written language as a medium gains a degree of precision from a reasonably predictable set of rules and conventions. The relationships discussed above could be provisionally mapped out diagrammatically (see Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 Writing and representation

This relationship between writing and representation is a key question in semiotics, and debates about the nature of such representation have troubled modern linguistics as well as educational debates about the teaching of writing.⁸ Sometimes misunderstandings have their origin in the everyday way in which we seem to automatically associate a written word with an object in the world, but they can also originate in the tendency to take our own alphabetic system of writing as a template for all writing systems. Any robust account of writing must be able to account for all writing systems (including, for example, those of the 1.5 billion speakers of Chinese and the large populations that use Hindi, Arabic or Russian on a daily basis). The key test for a model of representation such as the one in Figure 1.2 lies in its ability to account for different writing systems.

Let’s test this model for three writing systems: modern Arabic, modern Mandarin and ancient Cuneiform. Firstly, Arabic. Here we have a writing system that uses a notational script and a right-to-left directionality – one that is obviously quite different from the English alphabetic script. Arabic writing is used to represent many different languages including Somali, Farsi and Urdu. It is also the scriptural language of Islam and the language of the Quran. Like English, Arabic uses an alphabetic system or ‘abjad’ of twenty-eight letters. The technical term ‘abjad’ was coined by Daniels⁹ to describe a notation system based only on consonants. In Arabic, these consonants are written in a cursive script, whereas vowels, when they are needed, are represented by diacritics – those dashes and dots that appear above or below the letters. The Arabic system uses combinations of this abjad to construct, or spell, words such as َﻣﺎﺀ (‘maa’ – water). This notational system works phonetically in a way that is consistent with the model in Figure 1.2.

Mandarin uses an entirely different approach, best described as a character-based system. Individual characters, used either singly or in combination, represent words. Not only does Mandarin look completely different as a notational system, it is based on a completely different logic. There is no phonetic correspondence or spelling involved, only the graphical components (originally brushstrokes) that make up characters. Traditionally, Mandarin was written from right to left in vertical columns, beginning at the top right-hand side and progressing to the bottom of the page. More recently, a horizontal, left-to-write directionality has become more or less standard. Mandarin uses a logographic approach to notation – characters stand for words or parts of words. Despite all its differences and its recent changes, we can see that Mandarin is a rule-governed writing system for representing words.

Looking at Cuneiform is an interesting contrast to the examples used so far. Here we are dealing with one of the oldest writing systems we know of, one that is not in contemporary use and one that has no obvious connection with a living speech community. Cuneiform is the name given to the wedge-shaped impressions on clay tablets, dating back to around 3200 BCE, recovered from Mesopotamia and now housed in museums around the world. This system of writing was used for at least two languages, Sumerian and Akkadian. Specific combinations of the wedged imprints were initially used to represent syllables. The fact that Cuneiform was extinct for nearly 2,000 years until it was deciphered in the 1850s makes it an interesting test case. Before then, and after it had fallen into disuse, it might have been recognized as a writing system, but decoding it remained a mystery. Through a series of exercises of transliteration that enabled the comparison of Cuneiform with familiar and readable scripts, scholars were slowly able to crack the code to reveal the languages that were being expressed. Only then were we able to read Cuneiform by working out which languages the syllabic notation approximated to. And as a result of this, historians have been able to gain fascinating insights into the lives of the people who used it. This has included some of the earliest recipes, laundry receipts and poetry, as well as letters, official records, everyday arrangements, legal documents and texts referring to religious and supernatural matters. All this is achieved through a syllabic writing system used to refer to the world as experienced, felt or imagined (see Figure 1.2).

What Arabic, Mandarin and Cuneiform have in common, then, is the systematic use of a set of marks or symbols that constitute a language. I have been referring to those marks as a system of notation. There are, of course, other notational systems such as those used for music and mathematics, but they don’t combine in the way that languages do. Writing is distinct because it is a form of communication based on a linguistic system of meaning making. This is a semi-autonomous system that enjoys a dynamic relationship with spoken languages – and it is never anything other than visual. The messages on my iPad just like those on Sumerian clay tablets, and Roman wax tablets have this in common: they provide a visual display of a readable notation system for communicating meaning. In order to write, we need to be able to make our own marks on these tablets – or on any surface or screen.

1.5 A Technology for Writing

All this adds up to a recognition that writing as a visible language must always have a material form. It must involve a process of mark making. Writing has to leave an impression whether its chiselled into stone, laser printed on a box or displayed on a billboard. It has to have a certain durability in order to communicate – although, admittedly, some writing may have a very brief appearance. Skywriting is quickly blown away and a finger-written message on a steamy mirror won’t last long. Other writing with a much longer shelf-life would include the Cuneiform clay tablets I referred to earlier on as well as the Mayan writing of meso-America carved on standing stones and public monuments. And since writing is a material phenomenon – a visual language system, those marks have to appear somewhere. This is what I shall refer to in what follows as the display principle.

As a visible language, writing involves making permanent or semi-permanent marks on a surface or screen. It requires technology to do this – tools for making those marks, as well as ways of producing or preparing surfaces for those marks to be displayed upon. I refer to this as the display principle. Human involvement is as necessary for this work as it is for the act of writing itself. Fashioning wax tablets, stretching animal skins to make vellum and filling ink cartridges are all examples of this ‘hidden’ human labour of writing. Writers, working with these human and material resources, must be competent at using the technology before anything else. As well as knowing how writing works as a linguistic system, they must also know how to hold, direct, manipulate or operate particular mark making tools. Because of this, the technology of writing has an important somatic component – it depends on the work of the hand and eye, not just in the act of writing, but also in arranging and coordinating all the supplementary artefacts that support the writing task, including such things as lighted tables and desks to work on, materials for preparing, correcting and printing and so on.¹ The bodily actions involved require some precision and must be well-practised in order to produce the visual marks of a particular writing system, whether these are the result of the imprint of a stylus on clay, the combinations of keystrokes on a keyboard, or brush and ink strokes on paper or silk. Each writing act involves quite specific motor skills and levels of control. Because of all this, any history of writing has to take account of the technologies it has used. Writers make use of the tools to hand, and this often demands a high degree of manual dexterity,² training and practice. Thinking about writing in this way includes both conventional and creative or improvisational practices such as tags spray-painted on railway bridges, lovers’ initials carved on a park bench or a playful message written on the wet sand. These appearances of writing are not what you might call official, nor are they formally taught, but they constitute a writing technology through the physical action of leaving a message on a legible surface. They are all examples of the material dimension of writing. In what follows, I explore this material dimension in more depth, in what I call the matter of writing. This involves looking at the history of different writing technologies and techniques, the more recent mechanization of writing and its effects. And, because writing is both physical and material, I conclude with a look at the physical demands that writing makes on the body.

2.1 Uncovering Old Material

When the financial and media giant Bloomberg began to work on laying the foundations to their new headquarters in London, archaeologists recovered over four hundred Roman tablets preserved in the thick wet mud underground. Some of these tablets were recycled barrel staves that had been carefully coated with soot-stained beeswax. By the time of their excavation, between 2010 and 2014, the wax had leached away, but stylus scratches on the soft wood underneath were enough for experts to piece together what are thought to be the earliest examples of writing to be found in England³ dating back to the first century CE. These wax tablets were meant to be held, they were meant to display the scratch-marked impressions left by an iron stylus. They are an early example of a portable writing device, roughly the size of a modern iPad. The similarities are instructive – a tablet can be easily held in the hand, it can be moved around, picked up or put down and it can be easily stowed away. Like an iPad the surface of a wax tablet can be worked on within optimal focal range, and the marks on it can be preserved or erased. Such a writing device is certainly handy and lends itself to many uses. Scholarly work on the Bloomberg finds and other Roman wax tablets of a similar age shows how they were used in day-to-day life to settle legal matters, to make party invitations and to negotiate the exchange of slaves. The durability of the written material, so necessary at the time, meant that some of the messages far outlived their immediate purpose. This is one of the happy accidents of writing. Because writing technologies are designed to leave a lasting impression, texts may hold the traces of past lives, giving us precious insights into the everyday experiences and the social and cultural conditions of our forebears.

Clay, like wax, has a particular quality to it. Soft enough to handle, it can easily be moulded, marked or imprinted and, under the right conditions, that mark will be preserved. Whereas beeswax was plentiful in Roman times and used for a whole variety of purposes, the clay used for writing in Mesopotamia was river mud washed down by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers each springtime. The distinctive vertical, horizontal and oblique wedge-shaped marks of Cuneiform were made by using a reed stylus pressed into rolled out clay. The physical work is quite distinctive, and ideally matched to the material. Cuneiform script is the result of pressing, not the dragging of a stylus or pencil – that was to come later. Cuneiform may have started off as a simple book-keeping device, to keep a tally of rations and livestock, but as it developed it was used to record myths, epic poems and to store medical and scientific knowledge. All this was impressed on clay.

The rich historical record, from Mesopotamia and elsewhere, draws attention to the material qualities of writing as well as to the physical activity of mark making itself. This takes us closer to the invention of writing techniques, and it also tells a fascinating story of innovation and experimentation as these techniques were developed. But there is one kind of writing that is thought to preserve an unbroken connection to the past, and that is Chinese. Its distinctive script has remained fairly stable since it was standardized some 2,200 years ago.⁴ Many Chinese still value brush stroke characters and their varied calligraphic form has deep cultural significance. The characters themselves are formed out of continuous lines and dots combining as distinctive patterns that would typically be scaled to fit into an imagined square shape or Hanzi grid (see Figure 2.1). Traditionally written on bamboo or bark, a Chinese scribe would need an assortment of animal hair brushes, an inkstone and a bowl of water. Originally, the ink would have been made from animal glue, soot and plant dye.

Figure 2.1 The Chinese character mù (wood; wooden; tree; timber) placed in a Hanzi grid.

By the first century CE, silk had become a fashionable writing surface, but because of its expense, alternatives were used, and these sometimes involved the use of cloth or vegetable matter. This experimentation eventually led to the invention of paper. For the following five hundred years, the Chinese held what amounted to a state monopoly on paper. Paper production and manufacturing techniques were a closely guarded secret.

Practical knowledge on paper-making subsequently travelled in two different directions. West along the silk route into Central Asia and East towards Japan and Korea. As the contemporary expert on paper production, Nicholas Basbanes⁵ observes ‘In both movements, the earliest purveyors were Buddhist monks, who used the material to propagate sacred sutras’. In the following section, I trace the history of paper to show the spread and refinement of its material form. Paper is an essential part of print-based writing practices, and even if we’re writing on-screen, the idea of the page and its layout lies behind what we see.

2.2 On Paper

Paper first arrived in England in the thirteenth century.⁶ As we have seen, it was developed in China around 100 CE, and its use then spread through the Islamic world. Italian paper makers later discovered that they could pulp vegetable material together with rags and old ropes and were mass producing it by the mid twelfth century. These manufacturers watermarked their paper by using wire shapes in the drying process, creating an early instance of product branding. Paper had important material characteristics that were invaluable to writers. Its surface was even and had a glowing plain white colour, it could easily be cut into sheets of standard dimensions, and because of its fibrous quality, it absorbed ink well and this meant that writers could work quickly.

In the West, the transition from parchment to paper was gradual. Parchment was initially the more familiar writing surface, it was readily available and it had its advantages. It was stronger, thicker and harder to tear. Parchment could easily be stored or rolled up to carry. So initially, paper was seen as an exotic commodity for writing on – although the cheaper kinds were still used for decoration and protecting food. Parchment, usually made from sheep skins, continued to be produced. Skins were washed and stretched on a wooden frame; hair was scraped off and it was cut into rectangles. This process was labour intensive and involved its fair share of slicing, scraping and stitching and as one contemporary commentator suggests, its manufacture would have been accompanied by ‘the smell and taste of guts and wood, fire and melting wax.’⁷ The parchment writing surface needed to be repeatedly polished by scribes to hold ink. Although this all seems quite laborious, parchment continued to be used alongside paper and sometimes they were used in combination. As paper became cheaper though, its use became more widespread. The earliest surviving texts written on paper in England are town records from the beginning of the fourteenth century, but some official documents such as Acts of Parliament and property deeds continued to be written on parchment until quite recently.

Before the advent of texting and word processing, most texts were written on paper by hand, either in pen or pencil. We may live to look back, with nostalgia, to the hey-day of stationery, with its fascinating array of notebooks, pads, jotters and post-its; its abundance of ballpoints, felt-tips, coloured pencils and fountain pens. And that’s before we consider all those handy supplementary tools such as pencil sharpeners, erasers, blotting paper and correcting fluids. Writing by hand has a distinctive feel to it, and sometimes we find that we prefer it.

The Uruguayan writer, Mario Levrero, often concerned himself with the material processes of writing. In The Luminous Novel⁸ his narrator, a frustrated writer, tells us:

Later on, he reflects on what it’s like to write with the Rotring:

Here, there’s something of the aesthetic quality of writing by hand, and the subtle tactility of the experience. Although Levrero’s narrator is almost certainly playing with words when he says he wants something to hold him back, it works because we can easily recall the physicality of writing, and the finely balanced trade-off between the flow of the pen and the resistance of the paper. Just as ink pens, in their various forms, can combine so easily with paper, so can printing ink. And although ink itself wasn’t developed overnight, printers soon found ways of mass-producing legible copy.

The refinement of printing ink and paper coincided with the rise of mass literacy – texts could be quickly and cheaply produced for a growing market of readers. New kinds of expendable and ephemeral print texts flourished – pamphlets, posters and handbills became popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and paper was the ideal medium for these. Of course, these sorts of paper-based texts continue to be used, despite the rise of digital media. The circulation of different kinds of advertising is often now thought of as junk mail. Pamphlets, political campaigns, pizza promotions and advertising for vitamin supplements compete for space in the letter box. Still, there is a wealth of printed material in circulation, on food packaging, cosmetics and detergent as well as in the form of journals, books and instructional material. We still consume vast amounts of paper and much of this is produced from organic material.

Wood is still used extensively in paper production. UPM, one of the largest paper manufacturers in Europe uses wood from its own forests in Finland, supplementing this with imports from the United States and Uruguay. Although changing patterns of publishing and growing awareness of sustainability are now having an impact on the paper industry, paper use remains high. We take it for granted as a writing material – paper stationery is big business, but its widespread use in Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the Early Modern period, the dominant writing surface was still parchment or vellum. Of course, parchment and paper weren’t the only surfaces for writing, but thinking about their development and overlapping use draws our attention to the importance of mark making and display in the history of writing. Despite the move to digital communication and ideas like the paperless office, the printed and handwritten text is still very much in evidence. Some people prefer to read a printout, to hold and fold a sheet of paper and, of course, the book – that old-fashioned printed object, is still held in very high esteem.

2.3 On Screen

The history of the screen as a display space for writing is a much shorter one, beginning with cathode ray tube (CRT) development. The CRT was invented towards the end of the nineteenth century, but it wasn’t used to display writing until the early days of computing. These quite bulky CRT screens were superseded by flat-panel monitors in the 1990s, some of which now include touchscreen technology. The texts they display are made up of pixels activated by varying electric currents. Highly sophisticated screen technology involves the use of rare minerals like indium (China is the leading producer), combined with silicon which is sandwiched between thin sheets of glass. This is all part of the display of pin-sharp letters and images on our computer screens. But screen manufacture has a significant environmental cost, too. Not only does it depend upon the use of rare minerals, manufacture also involves processes that make a substantial contribution to global warming. Screens are difficult to dispose of – LCDs are classed as hazardous material. And, of course, it’s also the case that there is an energy cost in running them, particularly, on a scale that we now do. Although there are moves to make new technologies ‘greener’, it does feel that we are at a very early stage in doing this.

This very brief overview of display screens serves to illustrate a fundamental shift in the materiality of writing. It is quite remarkable to consider how quickly we have adapted to using screens. A large part of this must be attributed to the appearance of similarity. By this I mean the repurposing of keyboards as input devices, and the ways in which letters and words appear on screen as if they were ink freshly printed on a paper. Just as we took pen and paper for granted, we now take keyboards and screens for granted. They become the means for writing rather than objects themselves. As writing tools they ‘withdraw’ from our direct experience, unless, or until they break down.⁹

What can this focus on the materiality of writing tells us about contemporary practices? What can we learn from the study of mark making tools and writing surfaces that is applicable to the current context? Technology, always central to the business of writing, now makes it possible to communicate rapidly across great distances and yet we are still concerned with producing and distributing neatly constructed linguistic symbols. Even contemporary writing practices depend upon tools or devices, the act of writing still involves the work of the hand and the eye, and what has been written must appear on a surface or screen in order to be read – the display principle is still very much in evidence.

People still argue that in moving to word processing we have lost our intimate connection with the materials we use. The hand of the writer is, in a sense, hidden from us. That close relationship between the person who writes the message and the message itself, discernable through the subtle movements of the hand, the choice of pen and ink and the quality of the paper, has become less relevant in an age of digital communication. In the eyes of graphologists and handwriting experts, this is a loss. In all probability, it is a loss that is outweighed by gains in speed and connectivity, and perhaps in some cases in legibility, too. Although there is undoubtedly an art in producing a flowing cursive hand, or a regimented gothic script, it is important to distinguish aesthetic appreciation from romantic nostalgia. In the end, it might be better to turn away from simple comparisons and accept that when it comes to writing, the old can happily co-exist with the new. Beautiful handwriting can still be appreciated even if keyboard skills are in ascendency. As we shall see, the gradual mechanization of writing has in fact taken place alongside traditional methods, and whilst this mechanization has introduced new possibilities they haven’t always displaced older practices.

2.4 The Hand and the Body

All acts of writing have a physical dimension. In one way, the writer has to be able to manipulate or operate the tools of mark making, and this involves particular orientations of the body and a degree of manual dexterity. There are relatively few exceptions, and these are mostly in the realm of assistive technology, which often involves ingenious adaptations that make writing available to people with disabilities. Writing always requires some sort of physical movement; we have yet to invent a system for writing that doesn’t. The closest we get is with speech-to-writing software – although, of course, even then we are dependent on the physical side of vocality.

Writers may work sitting cross-legged on the floor (as in depictions of Mayan scribes), on chairs, at tables or desks, or in a standing position. Part of this is dependent upon how the writing is displayed, but it also involves some consideration of the secondary or supplementary materials required and the availability of rests, tables or special desks to stand at. More portable writing technologies are by nature less constrained, we can text whilst standing or walking, or scribble in a notebook balanced on our knees. More than anything else though, writing involves the co-ordinated work of hand and eye. The neurologist Frank Wilson¹⁰ shows how the bone structures and muscular attachments used to grip, hold and rotate need the eye to guide them. He describes the ‘writing/drawing cluster’ associated with precision grips and focused, repetitive tapping. Often, both hands are implicated – on a keyboard the left and the right do similar sorts of things, whereas writing with pen and paper involves a distribution of labour. The dominant hand may wield the pen or pencil whilst the non-dominant hand steadies and repositions the page.

Thinking about the materiality of writing involves consideration of some of the supplementary activities involved. In his memoir Speak, Memory, Nabokov¹¹ offers some finely tuned recollections of learning to write, focusing on the materiality and affect of observing the work of his adult tutors. For example, here is the quite, bearded Mr Cummings.

And ‘Mademoiselle’, who has a very particular way of preparing a new copybook.

These are not just the finely tuned observations of an accomplished writer, they are celebratory descriptions of the materiality of writing.

Newer technologies require different sorts of manual dexterity. Here, the physical aspect of texting is worth some consideration. Those less familiar or less experienced in using smartphones may prefer to steady the device in their non-dominant hand and prod away at the virtual keyboard, as in one-finger typing, whereas more experienced (often younger users) may cradle the phone in both hands, typing with their thumbs. We’re now seeing how very young children pick up and hold smartphones and toy phones in characteristic fashion, often imitating texting with their thumbs. It’s surprising to recall how we once found this practice so unusual. Literature of that time described the emergence of ‘thumb tribes’ – groups of people who seemed to be writing with their thumbs all the time! It’s become so unremarkable now, that we rarely comment on it, but it is another example of a writing practice with distinctive orientations of the hand and body and its own requirements of grip and precision.

Precision grips have often been a bit of an obsession of handwriting teachers, although it should be acknowledged that getting a comfortable grip that allows for a smooth and legible written script is important. Levrero’s narrator, distracted once again from his story, this time by the appearance of his own handwriting, writes:

The narrator’s struggle to write The Luminous Novel, which is always threatening to escape from his grip is figuratively shadowed by the struggle involved in holding the pen. But if we are all obliged to find some sort of comfortable pencil grip, we also have to work out how to type – and there is ongoing debate about the importance of touch-typing and its relevance in word processing.

2.5 Reproducing Writing

Once a writing system has become standardized, a word or message can be reproduced time and time again, and the meaning will remain relatively stable. This is, of course, central to the use of seals and signatures, as well as to the effectiveness of the logos and trademarks used in marketing products.¹² If such mark making is to be regularly repeated, a word-by-word or letter-by-letter transcription can be time consuming. Since the early appearance of writing, techniques for speeding up the reproduction of regularly used words and phrases have been deployed. Four and half thousand years ago, the Akkadians of Mesopotamia were using inscribed nails and stamps to identify property ownership and to mark clay building bricks. Developing a specialized technology for reproducing a name or a message could be seen as the origin of printing, and this suggests a much longer history than is usually acknowledged. The European school system with its celebration of Gutenburg’s Bible, printed in 1454, has sometimes worked to obscure the fuller story. It’s well worth dwelling here on the invention and development of printing technique by placing it in the wider context of the reproduction and mechanisation of writing. As we have seen, the use of seals and signets are the clearest successor to the Akkadian stamping technique and the use of such devices on property markings and legal agreements stretches back to about 500 BCE in China.

In China, the history of printing most likely began with making patterns on textiles. The use of woodblocks for reproducing written text may have built on this, and dates back to the seventh century CE Tang Dynasty. The oldest block print book bearing a clear publication date is a Chinese imprint of The Diamond Sutra discovered in the Dunhuang cave complex. It gives the date of publication as 11 May 868. The earliest printing techniques developed in China involved chiselling out woodblocks, usually a page at a time, and this process was adapted by the Koreans in first century BCE, who were by then also using the Chinese script. By the early thirteenth century CE, an alternative method was devised which involved a process originally used for minting bronze coins. Individual characters, cast in metal were arranged in a wooden frame and then coated with ink. In other words, moveable type was being used – and what’s more it was being used in Korea two hundred years before Gutenberg. The Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings was printed in 1377 and can legitimately lay claim to being the oldest extant book printed with movable type.¹³

Although the history of printing processes followed a number of different trajectories, one thing that has intrigued scholars is the way in which the development of European printing presses led to rapid growth in book production whereas in China (and elsewhere) the invention of printing had less of an impact. Linguistic and technological challenges can only partly account for this. Comparatively lower rates of literacy in China may also have contributed – and it was certainly the case that the pattern of demand was different. For example, well-established processes of block printing were able to satisfy the demand for Buddhist texts without the need of movable type. But it also seems that the entrepreneurial spirit of Gutenburg and his contemporaries combined forces with a range of social and cultural changes in contributing to the transformative effect of the printing presses of Europe. Given this chapter’s focus on materiality, this comparison is useful because it serves to remind us that despite the importance of materials and technological development, wider forces are always at work in the development and spread of new ways of writing.

2.6 The Mechanization of Writing

A step change in writing technology accompanied the industrial revolution as it spread across Europe and through America. The possibility of rapid message exchange across large distances accompanied the new sense of connection associated with the developing transport infrastructure. The idea of communicating ‘down the line’ about the arrival and departure of trains led to the early development of the telegraph.¹⁴ And when William Cooke first introduced the electric telegraph in the UK it was essentially a signalling system for the railways. The messaging system that Cooke developed with Charles Wheatstone was soon superseded by the more reliable Morse code – and this, in turn, led to a growth of interest and use. Initially though, the cost of transmission and the location of telegraph offices was an obstacle – telegraph offices at railway stations weren’t always easily accessible and the postal service was cheaper, more efficient and, of course, familiar. But by the 1870s, telegraph distribution had become transcontinental, resulting in a quick and reliable way of transmitting written messages over long distances. The telegraph quickly became important in developing new commercial markets and worked together with an expanding trade network. However, it’s important at this point to underline that the Morse code it depended on is not writing in and of itself: it is a way of encoding messages that can be directly transferred into written text. Morse code employs combinations of dots and dashes to represent letters of the alphabet. It could be thought of as a meta-alphabet.¹⁵ This worked to the advantage of its English language users and was easily adaptable to languages that used the same script, but it proved to be an obstacle to users of other writing systems.

A further layer of complexity was required to send telegrams in a character-based language like Chinese. Characters had to be transmitted as strings of numbers, and numbers cost more than letters. Operators needed to use a complex codebook which meant that a simple message, that in English might take two minutes to read, could take half an hour to read in Chinese. Add to this the fact that foreign owners of telegraph lines in mainline China were able to set their own tariffs and it’s easy to see why the cost and efficiency benefits of telegraphy were unevenly distributed, working to the distinct disadvantage of users of non-alphabetic scripts. A reasonable concession to this alphabetic bias was only agreed in 1925 – but it was just that – a concession, a kind of linguistic domination was written into the design of Morse code.

Another highly significant contribution to the mechanization of writing was the typewriter. In all probability, the idea of a mechanical writing machine had its origins in the design of a prosthetic device for the visually impaired¹⁶ and there were a number of failed attempts along the way. The first commercially available typewriter, the Remington No.1 was available in 1874. It had forty-four keys and could reproduce all the capital letters of the alphabet, numbers and punctuation. It used a foot pedal to return the carriage for starting a new line, probably adapting the idea from treadle sewing machines. The Remington company were originally gunsmiths, but by the time they released the Remington No.2 they were riding the crest of a new wave, and demand for the typewriter was exceeding supply. And, as with the development of telegraphy, the invention of the typewriter worked to the distinct advantage of its first English language users. The challenge of designing a Chinese typewriter was taken up by numerous students and amateur engineers who faced the formidable task of making a machine that could mechanically reproduce several thousand different characters. Zhou Houkun’s typewriter, first exhibited in 1926, was able to reproduce 4,000 characters, but the basic operation was always going to be more time consuming.¹⁷

In industrial and post-industrial societies, the typewriter became an integral part of a burgeoning office culture, and secretarial work was often conducted on a massive scale (see Figure 2.2). Typists were knitted into new social and cultural arrangements which thrived on lightweight, semi-skilled and often casual labour. These new arrangements worked alongside changing conceptions of gender roles to open employment opportunities for women. However, as Figure 2.2 graphically illustrates, this resulted in new gendered hierarchies in the workplace – and these cast a long shadow. In many contexts, the idea that some kinds of work, and indeed some kinds of writing are ideally suited to women, persist. I pick up this theme of power relations in writing in Chapter 5.

Figure 2.2 The typing pool – bureaucracy on an industrial scale.

Although the offices of countless businesses and organisations once rang out with the clacking of typewriters, and employed armies of female typists,¹⁸ the rapid adoption of word processing changed all this in a relatively short period of time. The QWERTY keyboard, originally a quick fix to prevent typewriter keys from jamming, was simply repurposed for the computer keyboard. Many of the textual forms associated with typing became digital in the early stages of word processing, and much of the language we still use holds the memory of the recent past – our documents and files are stored in folders, and we bring those up on a virtual desktop. Emails, originally a sort of electronic memo, may be the most common official form of communication now, but formal letters, perhaps saved and sent as PDFs, still retain page designs inherited from their typewritten forebears.

The invention of the keyboard eventually led to a radical transformation of the way in which we write. Keyboards require us to choose and combine the letters we write from the labelled keys in front of us – our machines do the rest. With a stylus or a pen, we make and combine the letter forms. The logic of formation is replaced by the logic of selection. This requires a different skill set, different kinds of manual dexterity and, arguably, a different kind of cognitive operation. Our relationship with the text we have written is changed as a result. The development of predictive text pushes this transformation further. When we use predictive text an initial attempt to combine letters generates several possible words, which we can then choose from. Accurately spelling the whole word, if it is presented to us, depends on reading, recognition and selection rather than unprompted recall. Considered together, these are radical changes in how we write. Personally, I don’t think there’s much to be gained by worrying over what may be lost as a result because there is a sense in which these changes are unstoppable – they have already happened. However, they may prompt debates about how we teach writing and I will return to a consideration of this later in the book.

2.7 Eyestrain, Backache and Sore Fingers

Given the materiality of writing, the lack of scholarship on its physical effects is quite surprising. Many writers complain of back pain, aching wrists and eye strain, but probably most of us have forgotten the struggles of finding a comfortable pencil grip and the challenge of getting our pen to travel in the intended direction on the page. Inevitably, the technology we write with places particular demands on our body. For example, when we use pen and paper not only do we need a pincer grip to hold the pen, but we also use the other hand to steady and align the paper. The head is often bent over the page we write on. In contrast, the keyboard is usually operated with both hands, and the display (at least on a desktop computer) is in front of us. Our body positioning is quite different – particularly if we stand up, as I am doing as I write these words. Contemporary complaints about writing tend to focus on the amount of screen time and the deleterious effects of screen glare as opposed to writer’s cramp and the eyestrain of peering too closely at the page as they did in the not too distant past. Many employers now provide guidelines and support to help their workforce guard against the effects of bad posture, frozen shoulders and repetitive strain injury, often the result of too much time spent in front of a computer screen.

The most interesting insights on this topic often come from professional writers. In an essay called A Passage of the Hands,¹⁹ the late Barry Lopez reflected on his life through the work of his own hands, their memory of sensations, what they express, the objects they have held and the scars they bear. With respect to writing, he recalls how the ‘pressure and friction of a pencil as I labored down the spelling of words right-handed raised the oldest permanent mark, a callus on the third joint of the middle finger’ (p. 213). And then later, by the end of his teenage years, when he was developing an ambition to write he draws our attention to his experience of the physicality of writing.

Doubtless, the physical effects of writing are most keenly felt by those who make their living by it. We know, for example, that the chronic wrist pain experienced by Henry James motivated him to invest in a typewriter and to hire a stenographer, and perhaps this contributed to the particular style he then developed. Even medieval scribes complained and the evidence is found in the marginalia they left. One commented that: ‘It is a painful task. It extinguishes the light from the eyes, it bends the back, it crushes the viscera and the ribs, it brings forth pain to the kidneys, and weariness to the whole body’.²⁰ For most contemporary writers, the physical effects are less extreme and the conditions they work under are less demanding. But writing is still a physical act, and the body needs to be trained to work in particular ways as it learns to control the tools of the trade. Learning to write, and learning to write well can sometimes be hard graft.²¹

The previous chapter provided us with an introduction to the materiality of writing and included a historical look at some of the tools and technologies of mark making and display, or what we might think of as the places of appearance of the written form. Display is essential for the visible language of writing. It is the mechanism through which writing appears as something legible in the visual field. And it is in this very literal sense that writing takes up space. The words we write have to fit into the display space in ways that we can read and, in most cases, find aesthetically pleasing. This inevitably involves a process of design and this is the focus of the current chapter. Sometimes, of course, the parameters of design are pre-determined, as they are in word processing packages and PowerPoint templates. Writing a text message simply involves typing words in the small oblong window at the bottom of the screen – the technology does the rest, framing it in a coloured speech bubble and indenting it to the right to indicate your ‘turn’ in a discussion. But whether we’re making a poster, writing a birthday greeting, or spray painting graffiti on a wall, our words appear in a particular physical space. In what follows, I turn towards this visual dimension, the shapes and forms that writing makes, focusing on the ways in which its overall visual appearance is designed. I look at the different ways in which writing occupies what I refer to as graphic space,¹ how it defines itself in relation to blank space and to other visual elements such as pictures, drawings and symbols. I also consider how things such as emphasis and authority are communicated and the ways in which distinctive layouts have become associated with different types of texts. Visual appearance is important when writing is used for decoration and embellishment, and in some cases, as we shall see, it becomes an art form in its own right.

3.1 Graphic Space: The Visual Appearance of Writing

Living in an era dominated by commercial writing packages like Word and PowerPoint, and the template styles of blogs and online learning packages, many of us have become attuned to the importance of design and layout. Accustomed to thinking about aspects of readability, such as how the reader will find a way through our writing, how the text is organized, how keywords and phrases are highlighted, as well as how and when to list things or show things diagrammatically, visual design has become an important part of our writing lives. In all aspects of layout, there are choices to be made; possibilities as well as constraints come into play. But thinking about the visual appearance of writing can be limited if we just use the page or the book as our only reference point. Of course, it’s tempting to do this because those forms have dominated centuries of intellectual history in the West, but the design principle has much wider application.

Most of the time if I tell people that I’m interested in writing, they automatically assume that I’m talking about books. It often takes a while to explain the breadth of my interest and to begin to talk about the many everyday uses of the written form. The fact of the matter is that the book, like the short story or the essay, is only one particular instance of writing, and whilst it is central to contemporary educational and literary practice, it is not necessarily typical of all writing. The book, the document and the journal article are distinctive because they are not usually context or place-specific.² They can be read anywhere by anyone who has the skill and motivation required. Their most salient reference points tend to be in-text, to ideas, events or characters that are described, introduced, developed or explained and their visual form often reflects this. Anticipation, reflection and other cross-referencing devices are important to them. Chapter headings and section titles aim to support this, and of course, in writing like this, indexes and references help in making meanings in relation to other texts. These are quite specific organizational features that are reflected in the design of texts and often involve different fonts, or font sizes, and paragraph or page breaks. In contrast to this, many everyday texts work rather differently.

For example, a group conversation on WhatsApp not only looks different to a print text or e-book but it also works through a completely different set of conventions. Comments may refer back to earlier messages or images, and emojis and gifs may be used to underline reactions, to signal irony, mood or stance³ – but the topics are more likely to be current, everyday events that relate to contexts of immediate, shared experience for the group members. There is no grand thematic organization and, for the most part, unless indicated by quotation, the discursive thread is linear. Another everyday example is list writing. Lists are usually even more informal than texts, they are often a more personal kind of writing, a way of extending and externalizing memory. A shopping list tends to appear as a straightforward vertical column of food items. It needs no other organizing principle. There’s not usually an order of priority or a particular sequence, and its function is quite specific. A list, compiled as a reminder, is usually scribbled down on a small scrap of paper, and its meaning is specific to a particular place and time. Last week’s shopping list has limited use this week, and a food list isn’t of much use in the DIY store. A shopping list, then, depends on context in a way that a novel or textbook doesn’t.

When we read across the above examples, it’s interesting to note how the visual appearance of writing differs along with the material form. The book, the message thread and the scrap of paper are quite different spaces for the appearance of writing – as is the advertising board, the directional sign or the credit card. As graphic spaces they operate differently, and they are dependent on context in different ways. The materiality of a text must then be fit for purpose, the size and design of the words must be appropriate and proportional to the textual space. Reflecting on this, it becomes more understandable why trying to fit your signature onto a banker’s card or a driving license can be such a challenge – there’s so little space left on that standard 3.5 × 2.0-inch piece of plastic. The bank card is designed to fit the ATM machine and to slip into your wallet. Its size and portability is a key feature. You need to scale down your signature to fit the space. Size and portability are important for a shopping list, too. We write our list on a scrap of paper – it doesn’t need to be presentable, just as long as it can slip into the back pocket. It can be folded or creased, but that’s not a problem, as long as we can read it when we need it. After all, it can be thrown away after use – not something we’d normally do with our bank card.

3.2 Words in Space

To think more generatively about writing spaces, the urban environment is a useful starting point. A modern city is a densely literate environment. Writing cascades across every conceivable space. Administrative, legal and commercial bodies display their names and services on signboards and shopfronts, electronic screens have static and mobile captions and handbills advertise events. We see, but hardly notice, public and private notices, official and unofficial words – words on walls, tags, stickers, posters, signs for secular and religious sites, information for tourists and directions for cyclists and motorists. Street furniture and manhole covers are stamped with their makers’ names, and in shops, products are labelled and categorized. Discarded receipts, chocolate wrappers and betting slips are all part of the urban detritus. Even the litter is lettered.

All these appearances illustrate the diversity of graphic space and the different forms and functions of writing. Importantly, this also includes the variety of scripts and writing systems used by different cultural and religious groups. Different writing addresses different readers and, in many cases – but not all – its placement matters. A signpost must do more than display the letters of a destination. It must be in the right place to fulfil its intended function. The reader must attend to the metal pole that it is attached to, the horizontal arm and its directionality, its shape as well as its colour. And it must be referenced to the reader’s own body in space, in relation to the post and its placement. A visitor with a smartphone may also need to assess its relative ‘authority’ perhaps by comparing it with a tourist map or an alternative route proposed by Google Maps.

Creativity and humour surface, too. The wheelie bin, in Figure 3.1, shows how human ingenuity or social commentary makes use of writing. Spray painted through a stencil the capitalized words parody the imperative of an instruction. You are invited to put your subversive thoughts here – placement is everything. This writing also works to identify this particular wheelie bin, so in all probability, it is also (or perhaps primarily) intended to function as a property marker.

Figure 3.1 Stencil work on a wheelie bin.

We can abstract some important principles about graphic space from the appearance of the text ‘Insert your subversive thoughts here’. First of all, the letters and words on display are of an appropriate and legible size; secondly, they are aligned and upright in a way that makes them easy to read; thirdly, they use conventional spacing and fourthly, a contrasting colour is used – in this case, white on black, which is easy to read.⁴ Of course these principles operate differently when we consider other graphic spaces such as webpages, legal contracts or advertisement hoardings, and they also change over time as tastes, practices and writing technologies change. Walk around your local cemetery and you’ll soon see how verbal expressions of loss, bereavement and commemoration have changed – and these changes not only include the words and phrases and decorative flourishes used by stonemasons but also the script styles they use. Nevertheless, they are constrained by what a stone and chisel can achieve, employing principles of graphic organization that are bounded by the shape of the headstone or plaque.

The visual appearance of print and script styles influences how a particular message is read. It is no accident that the wheelie bin text (Figure 3.1) uses capital letters. Capital letters are regularly used in notices to convey authority. It’s quite common for us to think of capitals as ‘shouty’ – they are used for emphasis and MUST NOT BE IGNORED! Other common devices that indicate subtler levels of modulation or inflection include italicization and underlining. Similarly, font choice in word-processed documents is not just a matter of personal preference, it communicates in its own right. For example, there is broad agreement that Comic Sans has a rather immature look to it, whereas the more traditional Times New Roman suggests some sort of authority. Although these are features of the English alphabet, there are parallels in other writing systems, too. For example, the five calligraphic styles of Arabic have particular resonances with different communities of Arabic speakers and the same goes for Chinese script styles, too.

If the page dominates our idea of what writing is, it also flattens it out, giving rise to the common misconception that writing is always two-dimensional. To the extent that the emphasis so far given to the importance of surfaces underscores an idea of flatness, it may be misleading. There is a necessary three-dimensional appearance to the oldest forms of writing, such as clay tablets, and it’s also common place in today’s world, too. Shop owners and vehicle manufacturers routinely use three-dimensional writing. It’s an important way of making things stand out. You find it on book covers, in embossed stationery, in greeting cards and legal documents and on papers stamped with sealing wax. It’s commonly used in stone carving, on monuments and memorial plaques. As Harris⁵ points out, it is also the defining feature of braille and even of some Chinese calligraphy in which the order of brushstrokes lends a layering effect. The artist, Robert Indiana (see Figure 3.2),⁶ takes this to a whole new level with his large sculptural assemblages of words like ‘love’, ‘hope’ and ‘eat’ which communicate something about the dominating presence of words in our everyday lives. Just those simple words in primary colours in their bold Didone font occupy space which is both commanding and banal, frivolous or deeply meaningful depending on how and where they are read.

Figure 3.2 Love by Robert Indiana.

Even though I have argued earlier for the relative durability and permanence of writing, electronic displays – as well as the earlier electric displays that once illuminated Piccadilly Circus and Time Square, can and do change quite quickly. They create movement in writing, allowing it to be displayed just long enough to be read, before it repeats or shows something else. Scrolling message boards create the same impression of movement across the graphic space. A common example is the scrolling, ‘ticker text’ that displays news updates on our TV screens. So, if time is to be seen as a dimension, we are now well into an era in which writing appears in four dimensions.

3.3 Sharing the Graphic Space

In many everyday appearances of writing, the graphic space is shared with other symbols, designs or illustrations. As we have already noted, mobile messaging systems now regularly incorporate visual material such as images, emojis and gifs. But this interplay with visual material is not a recent innovation – we should not forget that from the earliest of times, writing spaces were illustrated and decorated, just as they shared the graphic space with other symbolic and notational devices. The epigraphic writing of cultures in very different times and spaces demonstrates this; think, for example, of the Tifinagh rock carvings of the Berbers, or the inscriptions found in the Mayan regions of Mesoamerica.⁷ Scholarly interest in this phenomenon is strongly influenced by semiotics. Semiotics, the study of signs and meaning, is a relatively new discipline, but it has had a profound influence on how we think about writing. Over the last twenty-five years an emphasis on social semiotics, and particularly on the idea of multimodality, has encouraged us to think about graphic space in new ways.

The governing idea of multimodality⁸ is that we communicate through a range of distinct modes, such as speech, image, gesture and touch, and that in everyday interactions there is often an interplay between these modes. They may combine to reinforce a single message – advertising often does this – or one mode may offer a commentary, a particular emphasis or supplementary meaning to the main message. The relationship between modes is highly variable, both within a single interaction and between different instances of the same form or genre. An example of the first kind of variation is conversation. In the course of a single conversational interaction, we might well use gesture, bodily movement and touch as we speak – and it’s quite common to share visual information, too. Perhaps, we want to share some pictures of family and friends on our smartphone as a conversation unfolds. Typically, we will offer a commentary, adjust our body postures and maybe point or gesture towards the screen. Multimodality is also evident in many of the texts we encounter, too – for instance, web pages often incorporate still images, audio-visual content and animation in their design. Social semiotics helps in drawing attention to these complexities, encouraging us to see texts as multimodal ensembles and it also helps to highlight how meaning is produced by readers through the complex interplay of modes.

Interest in a multimodal perspective coincided with the rapid rise of screen-based communication in the early twenty-first century, and its take up by advocates of ‘new literacies’⁹ and ‘multiliteracies’ may have led some to think of multimodality as something new, something that developed with digital communication. Of course, multimedia screen-based communication lends itself to different forms of multimodal analysis and there is now considerable scholarship in this area. But communication has always been multimodal and the written form – from the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt to the palm leaf scriptures of the Himalayas and Early Modern illuminated manuscripts, repeatedly appears alongside symbols and images that depict things from the natural and supernatural world including human and animal forms. In other words, the idea that writing shares the graphic space is nothing new at all.

Sometimes the coexistence of several modes has a conventional or transactional feel to it. Web pages work on the principle of presenting information that will hold the user’s attention whilst offering clear navigational pathways to further information – usually through hyperlinks. This is achieved through careful and intentional design. But a full multimodal history of graphic spaces would also need to incorporate instances when decoration and embellishment reach the point at which they become an art form in their own right. Admittedly though, making the distinction between what might be seen as beautifully designed and what might be considered art could never be an easy task. Some might argue that it isn’t a distinction worth making. Yet, looking at the finest illuminated manuscripts it’s hard not to see them as works of art, and the same goes for calligraphy, too. Abd al-Qadir Hisari’s finely drawn ink representation of a galleon (Figure 3.3) is a case in point. The gold lettering (the names of the Seven Sleepers and their dog) is an exquisite example of Arabic calligraphy which complements, or even enhances, the quality of the image.

Figure 3.3 The Seven Sleepers – Islamic calligraphy.

(Abd al-Qadir Hisari, 1766)¹⁰

3.4 Mapping Writing

Another instructive example of multimodal design principles is the map. Maps are interesting for a number of reasons. As a material form they can be quite varied – from the folding 16 × 32-inch map favoured by walkers to the old school A3 road atlas or the simplified guide map offered free of charge in many hotels. A map can be a stand-alone text or it can be incorporated into other works. It can also be displayed, on the wall or on an information board in a public place. Maps make use of the graphic space in very specific ways, and combine different kinds of symbols and notation systems alongside the written word. On maps, words tend to be used to name specific locations and significant landmarks, and different categories often have their own typographical features (size, font, colour, etc.) and, of course, it’s crucially important where these words are shown since they must conform to the map’s particular representation of space if they are to be of any use at all.

As a culturally recognized textual form, most maps reference a physically present (or historical) place. Unlike fantasy maps or literary maps,¹¹ they represent actual places and objects and show them in relation to one another. In doing so they tell us what is of importance and what might be useful to us. They convey information that is of relevance to real-world practices, helping us to decide whether or not to travel from A to B, what the best route might be and, either through direct display or via secondary calculation, how long that journey might be expected to take and what we might see on the way that might aid our navigation. Undertaking a journey may involve iterative readings of map and world, and indeed this practice is central to activities that involve orienteering. In this sense, maps are inherently useful, working to aid and improve our travels. But, of course, they are also selective (only in the fictional world of Borges can a map show everything¹²), they hide certain things from view and reinforce boundaries, ownership and territory. They don’t just tell us where we are in the world, they highlight what is important to their makers. Modern European maps tend to put Europe at the top and centre, thereby giving them a ‘natural’ sense of importance. But there have been many passionate debates about cartographic distortion and the political implications of how centring, size and distance assert significance. In colonial histories, maps became a necessary instrument of domination, important in claiming territory and re-naming landmarks and places, and in times of war, they take on new significance in mapping advances, identifying enemy positions, troop movements and territorial gains and losses.

The important message here is about the way in which maps as a textual form are interwoven with culturally recognized practices. Such practices may seem innocent, but they always remind us that our sense of the world and our place in it are contingent. Rather than representing a pre-existing world, maps constitute a world view. From the medieval Mappa Mundi with its amalgam of history, mythology and Christianity, to the Senmo Map, which depicts the geography of Tibet in the form of a supine demoness, maps are complex objects with many layers of meaning. This perhaps reminds us that the apparent reality of Google Maps is not quite what it seems to be. Geospatial data are imbued with commercial interest, state-based governance, security and surveillance.

So through this brief consideration of maps, we have been able to think about a kind of text in which writing plays an important part, maps being an example of a particular kind of graphic space, in that they are distinctive material displays of information, governed by clear conventions of design. Often they include other notational systems or pictorial elements thus illustrating multimodality at work. Maps are texts which we see as useful, and for much of the time they are a convenient support to our way of life. There are occasions when we really appreciate having a good map. But, as we have seen, particular maps support particular social practices, they instantiate a particular view of geographical and historical space creating a view of the world that is not necessarily always helpful or even truthful.

3.5 Turning Back to the Page

Having earlier dismissed the idea that all writing works like a page in a book, we can now safely return to the graphic space of the page as a particular, and important, appearance of writing. The word-processed document is worthy of consideration. With respect to its defining features, we can see how it draws heavily on the logic of the printed page and in this sense, it is a direct descendent of the typewritten document. Some of the mechanical functions of the typewriter have been transferred to drop-down menus; other features, such as the choice of font and size, have also been added in. The appearance of words on a white space that looks for all the world like a piece of paper would, of course, be reassuringly familiar to a typist (never mind the fact that the ‘print’ is made of pixels and the ‘paper’ is just a white screen). Typewriters had few of the aids for textual layout that we are now familiar with – no automatic centring or right justification, for instance. Typists had to innovate, and this led to new conventions such as wider margins, paragraph indentations and choices about single- and double-spacing. We can trace the history of such innovations through the development of different styles of letter writing. The letter format we are so familiar with today, characterized by its distinctive blocks of text, was designed for and by the typewriter. It was widely disseminated through typing schools and manuals and rapidly became standardized. The layout of the letter was, in fact, transformed by the typewriter and typists introduced conventions that have only been slightly modified in contemporary word processing packages.

It’s tempting to think of page design and layout as relatively new ideas, but because writing is a visual medium, the writer always has to consider the visual space. Many of these decisions become second nature through learning and practising particular conventions, but they are very much in the mind of book designers, advertisers and printers. Some striking examples of creative ways of organising the graphic space are found in poetry. Easter Wings by George Herbert (1633) was apparently inspired by ancient Greek poetry in which the layout of the lines on the page creates an image to enrich the meaning of the poem. Easter Wings with its eye-catching design was originally printed sideways on to draw attention to this feature (see below).

Other examples include the famous Mallarmé poem, Un Coup de Dés (A Throw of the Dice,Reference Mallarmé1994), and Apollinaire’s collection of Calligrammes (Reference Apollinaire1973). A more contemporary exponent of this sort of poetic exploration of graphic space is E. E. Cummings.¹³ Cummings typically eschewed the conventions of capitalization and punctuation, creating a distinctive visual form that drew on the typographical possibilities of a typewritten poem. In ‘the sky was’ words and word-parts tumble down the page with unexpected breaks, spaces and indents. At the same time, the reader knows that the text is to be read left to right and line by line. It is anchored to the left margin working playfully and creatively with the reader’s pre-existing knowledge of how graphic space is organized on the page.

3.6 More than Just Pages

Of course, calligraphic art doesn’t just appear on the page or in book form. It utilizes a full range of material possibilities. Some of the closest parallels to the calligrams of Mallarmé and Cummings are foundin Chinese and Japanese scroll paintings. The example shown in Figure 3.4¹⁴ is from the Zen Master Hakuin (1685–1768), a painter and calligrapher from a small rural temple in Japan. Hakuin was one of the most versatile and original artists of the Edo period and his distinctive bold brushstrokes often communicated a key Buddhist teaching as in this poem on virtue (translated in the footnotes). Interestingly enough, many of the lay people that Hakuin encountered would have been illiterate and it is thought that he developed his paintings and poems as visual sermons.¹⁵ This could well explain why the character for virtue (toku) occupies some two-thirds of the graphic space. It has a pedagogical function. One might imagine that the large character, toku, would be repeatedly pointed to, as Hakuin addressed his audience. Reflecting on Hakuin’s calligraphic scrolls draws attention to the way in which graphic space is materially composed. The availability of long scrolls of paper, of brush and ink styles of writing support the visual style which characterizes his work. Hakuin built on a well-established tradition of Japanese writing which had first flourished in the paper culture of the Heian period.

Figure 3.4 Virtue.

(Hakuin Ekaku, mid-eighteenth century) – Japanese calligraphy

The crowning achievement of this earlier era was Murasaki Shikubu’s The Tale of the Genji (1000 CE).¹⁶ The author Murasaki was a lady-in-waiting in the Heian court and she is credited with writing the first great novel in world literature. The Tale of the Genji describes an environment of beautiful paper fans, lamps and screens. Paper, at this time, was used to make hats, household items and folding screens and every paper surface was a writing surface. In Genji’s novel, lovers exchange poems written on fans and use a range of dyes to create coloured paper. Murasaki’s work is a fitting reminder of how traditions of writing have repeatedly produced distinctive visual forms by creatively adapting the tools and technologies available at the time.

3.7 Aspects of Materiality

This chapter and the previous one have focused on two different aspects of the materiality of writing, of how the visual marks of writing are made and displayed. The first aspect, the main subject matter of Chapter 2, is directly related to the technology used in creating a visual display, whether we’re thinking of the spray paint and stencil used to write on a wheelie bin (Figure 3.1) or the brush and ink used to produce calligraphy (Figure 3.4). This could be thought of as the material form and site of appearance of writing – white paint on black plastic in the first example and black ink on silk scroll in the other. The second aspect of the materiality of writing has formed the main topic in this chapter and is concerned with how the particular visual marks occupy the visual, or graphic space on which they appear. The focus here is on the design of the visual space – the particular way in which the stencilled notice is placed on the bin or the way in which the characters are drawn on the scroll.

Distinguishing between these two aspects is helpful in thinking about the specific characteristics of digital writing. The common ground for digital writing is display. In digital writing, graphic symbols are rendered as pixels on a screen, and to this extent, it is its defining feature. Although there are a number of different ways of making that happen, most of which involve touch screens or keyboards, the display principle is the same. Of course, digital text can be viewed on different devices and at different scales, from the small screens of smartwatches to large desktop screens, or even larger message boards, but the essential translation of digital information into graphic symbols remains the same. Readers can alter the look of the text, and this might involve enlarging or reducing its size, and sometimes changing font – but the display principle remains unchanged. It’s only when we print off a digital text that we change the display principle, but then the writing has become something different – a print text.

When we apply the second aspect of materiality to digital writing, the distinction reveals much more. After all the design of the visual space is what makes a post on Twitter look so different from something on TikTok, a Wordpress blog or the humble Word document that I’m working with now. This could be referred to as the design principle. The design principle operates in terms of possibilities and constraints. I’m so used to what I can do on Word it’s hard to work out what I can’t do. Apparently, I can turn letters and words upside down, and alter the space between them and the directionality of the text, but although I can change page size, I’m always on the page despite all those possibilities. Of course, I can’t write on the back of my Word document, cut it up with scissors or use it to mark my place in a book, but I make good use of cutting and pasting functions – and quite a lot gets deleted, too! It seems that Word allows quite a bit in terms of design flexibility. Many commercially hosted sites (microblogs, blogs and most forms of social media) preserve their distinctive look by relatively tight design constraints and often provide some sort of template for what one writes or posts. Similar constraints apply to platforms used in educational and professional settings, such as Blackboard or Slack.

The use of digital technology in writing exploits both the display and the design principle. Because the text is actually stored as ‘bytes’ of information¹⁷ working digitally means that the same written text can be viewed on a variety of different devices for display. And because this digital information can be manipulated, I can edit and move what I have written (cutting and pasting are in this sense just metaphors) and I can change how it looks by re-formatting it or placing it in a template. None of these possibilities are unique to digital writing but they are easier to achieve and more readily available than ever before in the history of writing. Aspects of textual design which were previously part of the expert knowledge of typesetters, compositors and publishing houses are now available to anyone with entry-level competence and a good word-processing package.

To develop a full explanatory model of writing we need to combine the display and design principles with a third principle which has been implicit in all that has gone before – the mark-making principle. By this, I mean the use of tools to produce the legible symbols, or marks, that constitute the visual language itself. All known writing systems are based on a combination of these three principles; writing, itself, could be seen as a way of actualizing them. A couple of examples will illustrate the principles in operation. Firstly, let’s stick with word processing. Tapping on a keyboard connected to a laptop or desktop computer operationalizes the mark-making principle. The display principle is how that writing appears as marks on a screen (usually black on off-white, but that can be changed). The design principle is concerned with how the text occupies the space on the screen – its look on the page and the ‘window’ that frames it. As a second example, let’s consider Tifinagh, a much older non-European system of writing. Tifinagh is an abjad script used by the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahara, thought to date back to the first millennium BCE.¹⁸ The oldest examples are geometrical inscriptions found alongside rock art, but the writing is also found on rock fragments and in temple ruins. As an epigraphic form, the mark-making principle involved working carefully with a hammer and chisel; the placing of the stones themselves brings in the display principle, and the arrangement of the script, and its directionality – perhaps alongside a pictorial element, constitutes the design principle.

The first three chapters of this book have leant heavily on the history and development of writing. Throughout these chapters, I have tried to illustrate the different ways in which we can think of writing as a technology. I have suggested that writing can be defined as a technology that enables us to make durable visual marks, and that it is also, at the same time, a meaning-making technology, a linguistic symbol system that we use to make and communicate meaning. I refer to this as the ‘double technology’ of writing, but emphasize that these two technologies are co-dependent. There is no writing without a technology to produce it, and no writing that hasn’t meant something to the people who used it. Technologies are used to make and display durable written language which can store a meaningful message to be retrieved at later date. The way in which writing can store or preserve a message is its key characteristic. This has led many commentators, from Plato onwards, to reflect on how writing, as a way of preserving messages, acts as a sort of substitute for memory.

On the basis of this memory or storage function, it has subsequently been argued that writing may enable us to order our thoughts, to reflect, and to achieve levels of abstraction that may transform consciousness. In what follows, I critique the idea that writing has unique benefits, using the example of extended writing. I argue that the promise or potential of writing lies in what we do with writing, rather than what writing does with us. In order to interrogate this idea, I focus on the ways in which we think with writing – but a degree of caution is necessary. Just because we can do this, and because writing may outlast its immediate use, doesn’t mean that its prime function is always about keeping records, storing knowledge, cultural transmission and so on. It is just as important, and in fact incredibly useful, as a way of labelling and organizing our environment, and helping us to navigate the world, both literally and metaphorically. And, it has also evolved as a way of initiating and sustaining our social relationships in different ways. There are then many ways in which we have put writing to use and a wide variety of things that we do with writing.

Despite all of this, the print book still holds an important place in our culture. Its material solidity and its historic significance lend it an air of authority. The book as a material artefact combines with our associations and assumptions about it to create an impression of importance. But the permanence of writing, and print in particular, does not always or automatically confer knowledge or authority, and although the written word may sometimes appear to have authority, to fix meaning, to create some sort of objective truth, a moment’s reflection can call all this into question. Lies, misinformation and fake news play with these sorts of assumptions about writing and authority. Writing can be used to mislead us or to persuade us to do things we might regret. In this chapter, I look deeper into the double technology of writing to show what writing has and can be used for – its promise – but I will also consider how writing can just as easily mislead or undermine, control or cajole in ways that can be harmful to individuals or social groups.

4.1 The Promise

The memory function of writing releases facts, ideas, discoveries and stories from the present moment, from the constraints of both time and space, making them accessible to readers in other times and places. Partly because of this, writing has become key to the ways in which knowledge and understanding have developed. Of course, it’s not the only way that knowledge and understanding develop, it’s just that the invention of writing has, in a very general sense, served some of us well and has been used for that purpose. Writing is in fact so tightly bound up with Western ideas about knowledge and culture that it has sometimes been seen as synonymous with civilization itself. Barry Powell’s otherwise informative book ‘Writing’¹ is subtitled a ‘Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization’, as if to suggest that civilization – whatever we might mean by that – is somehow a result of the invention of writing. But I want to suggest that civilization is itself a problematic concept. Part of the difficulty is that the idea of civilization is based on an outdated and at times blatantly racist comparison between industrialized and technologically advanced societies and those who they colonized, dominated or otherwise exploited – those thereby deemed to be uncivilized. The grand narrative of civilization has reinforced cultural dominance and exclusion. And what’s more, accepting a linear monocultural conception of human social development has often meant turning a blind eye to the cultural practices and literacies of dominated groups. Of course, Powell himself does not argue for this view – in fact, it seems more likely that he is simply suggesting that writing may be important to human progress and perhaps to more complex forms of social and cultural life – but the idea raises the question of whether writing is important to human progress, and if so how? Does writing offer us distinctive individual or collective benefits that can be separated from the status it has achieved in our social worlds?

In language and literacy studies, this question received considerable scholarly attention from the 1960s onwards. Two ideas central to the claim that writing is important to human progress have been challenged by this body of work. The first idea is that learning and using writing develops particular ways of thinking or reasoning, including such things as reflection and abstraction, that might not otherwise be available to us. In some way or another, this implies that writing might be instrumental in restructuring consciousness, in how we think, in the ideas we hold, and the ways in which we then lead our lives. This couples with a second idea – that written expression can enrich our minds, by liberating us from the limiting conditions of our immediate everyday experience. In other words, writing – and reading – might somehow expand or extend our view of ourselves, and help us to realize our ‘full potential’. The central problem with both these ideas is that they lead to an unhelpful distinction between societies with high levels of literacy and established ways of valuing writing, and those that do not. And this, then, just becomes another iteration of the grand narrative of civilization set out above. If the distinction were to be held true, it would suggest that those from non-literate societies were somehow cognitively and linguistically impaired. There is not a shred of evidence for this. Surely, literate societies could value their achievements without disparaging others that have functioned perfectly well without writing? The distinction is a way of thinking that ignores other (non-literate) ways of knowing. Researchers have not been able to find any evidence of either social or cognitive benefits.² They have in fact shown how false claims have repeatedly been based on a confusion between the effects of schooling and the effects of literacy. The so-called divide between oral and literate societies works to reinforce White, ethnocentric and Western notions of superiority. Moving beyond debates about the cognitive benefits of writing, a generation of scholars has now focused on the more productive idea of literacy as a social practice, which emphasizes the ways in which writing and other semiotic tools get used in everyday life and, by implication, the habits of mind associated with different kinds of writing.³

Conceiving of literacy as a social practice turns our attention away from thinking of writing as a highly specialized technology with intrinsic cognitive benefits and encourages us to focus on that whole spectrum of human activity that includes the written word in some form or another. The central animating notion of literacy as a social practice holds that writing is always embedded in social relations, part of achieving specific day-to-day tasks and that in doing so it maintains particular kinds of power and authority. This point of view highlights how writing is woven into our daily lives and how specific interactions, or events, reflect broader patterns of practice.⁴ It shifts attention away from unhelpful cultural comparisons, focusing instead on the uses we make of literacy. But despite all this, we are left with the awkward question of whether writing allows us to do some things that would be difficult to achieve without the technology of this particular system of symbols. I suspect that the question is really unanswerable – in the end, we might just have no way of telling. However, I want to explore the particular case of extended writing because of its cultural significance and because of its centrality in dominant conceptions of knowledge.

4.2 The Potential

It might be helpful to start with a practical illustration. Imagine, for example, that I want to outline a campaign to reduce the impact of vehicle pollution in my neighbourhood. Straight away a number of possibilities present themselves. I could draw a few pictures, take some photographs or, of course, I could simply record myself speaking. But actually, I’d be more likely to try and write, or type out my ideas. That would be the go-to place for organizing my thoughts. I might develop some notes, use a mind-mapping technique, or I could simply just start writing. Wherever I chose to begin though, I trust that at some level or other that writing would allow me to advance my cause and develop my argument. The current situation is this, vehicle pollution is a problem because, pollution could be reduced by taking a number of actions, those actions would, in themselves, be beneficial in a number of ways and so on. The result, I hope, would be persuasive – and it would hang together as an argument. It would be a development of ideas and it would help me keep a number of ideas in play at the same time. It’s perhaps worth noting, at this point, that the process of thinking things through with writing, as illustrated in this example, can sometimes be a quite private affair, and whilst most of the examples in this book involve writing practices that are in some sense public, there are arguably as many writing practices whose sole audience is the writer.

To return to the example under consideration, the preference for approaching the challenge of outlining the campaign as described, through writing, is, of course, the result of a particular set of dispositions that are largely dependent on my own social and cultural conditioning. But also, without needing to resort to any sort of stylesheet or template, that particular way of writing, that genre, is familiar to me – it is, after all, learnt, and would most likely be familiar to those who might read it. It seems to me that I could communicate my ideas clearly in this way. It seems like a relatively simple task, and one that involves both of the technologies I mentioned above. The technology of making a mark, and the technology of recording and sharing information. What’s not clear though is whether there’s any necessary advantage in my using writing, as opposed to any other mode, for this purpose. Yes, it helps me to organize my thoughts, but that’s probably because I’m used to thinking with, and thinking through the written word. And all that, of course, is a product of education and experience in the broadest sense.

However, if you consider a longer piece of writing – such as the argument that I’m developing here, in this chapter, or even the broader scope of ideas that play across the book as a whole, something else begins to emerge. Yes, all the same basic ideas about writing drawn out in the example above are present, but I’m also playing with larger building blocks. Concepts that are developed, illustrated and refined, concepts that can be held in memory through the writing and concepts that refer back and forth to one another across repeated words and phrases, through headings and subheadings and so on. In this way, the writing becomes a sort of conceptual architecture. The conceptual architecture of the writing is somewhat different to that of spoken language. As Gunther Kress argues: ‘the co-ordinating, “chaining” syntax of speech presents conceptual materials in a distinctly different form from the subordinating, embedding syntax of writing. The one points to the order of sequence, the other points to the order of hierarchy’.⁵ In other words the syntactical organization of writing supports the conceptual architecture required for presenting complex, abstract ideas. And, of course, the hierarchical organization of ideas is a familiar, conventional use of writing closely associated with the technology of the book. Extended writing in book form also shows how writing can, and indeed has, become a cultural resource. Yet, despite all of this, I want to resist the idea that this is some special or essential quality of writing itself. It’s just what we do with writing. The developed written form invites, sustains and justifies particular ways of thinking. This is in line with current thinking about writing which has moved from a concern with what writing does to people to a concern for what people do with writing.⁶

4.3 Thinking with Writing

To develop this argument about what writing helps us to do, I want to suggest that extended writing – which includes the writing that we normally associate with the accumulation of knowledge and the development of longer literary forms like the novel, has come to perform a number of important functions in society. Although these forms are not exactly ‘markers of civilization’, they do have a significant shaping influence on contemporary life. I suggest that these extended forms support significant cultural practices, and that they are, in general, useful. Amongst all the practices and activities that involve extended writing, I want to highlight three particular qualities, or ways of thinking: reflection, connection and elucidation. In a way, all three have something to do with refining or marshalling our thoughts. They could then be seen as ways of thinking with writing. But I want to hold open the possibility that these functions could be achieved in other ways, too – we might, for example, have oral recounts and moving images as useful comparators, and I return to this later.

Firstly, reflection. It seems legitimate to claim that writing allows us to represent things in a way that enables us to reflect on them. Writing something down can objectify an observation, an event or a thought that we can revisit later. In other words, it can give something transient or abstract a material form. This is why different kinds of journaling are important. Journals enable us to replay the day’s events, our dream life, our moods or thoughts, so we can sift through them and perhaps see them more clearly, understand them better, or analyse their significance or pattern at a later date. They are an example of how, by writing things down, we can represent the world to ourselves and to others in ways that offer some critical distance. Not only is extended writing a way of representing ourselves to ourselves but it also allows us to construct possible worlds, or possible futures – scenarios that can help us explore our current predicaments and future plans through projection, analogy or contrast. Both factual and imaginative writing can have this reflective quality in offering us alternative readings of the past as well as the present.

Secondly, connection. Writing can give us access to the minds of others. This is probably most noticeable when we read what was written in another place or time. The translation of Cuneiform, of Roman tablets, or a close reading of Early Modern manuscripts offers us fascinating insights into the lives of other people in other times. Scholars who work closely with these and other historical texts often speak in terms of getting to know the writers themselves. A human connection is made – sometimes across thousands of years. And another example of connection lies in what can be achieved through fictional writing, through literature. Readers are introduced to different perspectives via imagined characters and situations, perhaps being more able to understand how others might see things. Tolstoy shows us what life might be like for a passionate character like Anna Karenina as well as for the hesitant and independent-minded Levin⁷; Damon Galgut shows us contemporary South Africa from the contrasting viewpoints of different members of the fictional Swart family.⁸ Both writers observe the thoughts of others and the world they inhabit through the eyes of invented characters, inviting readers to connect with the experience of others. Of course, they do a lot more than this, too, but connection is a central thread.

Thirdly, elucidation. This refers to the development of a particular idea or collection of ideas. My own experience tells me that there is no better way of developing an idea or analyzing a problem than through writing, as I suggested before. This may not be the same for everybody. In fact, it probably isn’t – but it is still an important function of writing, and it’s one of the reasons that I’m writing now. A vague idea can slowly become more vivid, more specific or clearer through the writing process, both to oneself and to one’s readers. That’s somewhat idealistic, of course – it’s not always like that. Perhaps you can relate to the experience of thinking that you knew what you meant until you tried to write it down! Sometimes, an idea just collapses or becomes so much more complicated than it seemed at first. You end up in a mess. But at its best or at its most effective, writing helps you to clarify your thoughts for yourself – and hopefully for others, too. I think this is what Hannah Arendt was alluding to when she described writing as an integral part of the process of understanding.⁹

If as I suggest reflection, connection and elucidation seem like good examples of the benefits of writing, do they stand up to scrutiny? Straight away two possible criticisms present themselves. Firstly, it could simply be the case that this is just a softer way of arguing for something we have already dismissed, namely the cognitive benefits of writing – that it somehow enables us to think in particular ways. And secondly, as mentioned previously, is it possible that these things could be achieved at least as well through other modes? If, as I asserted in the introduction to this section, these are seen as important examples of what I called thinking with writing, primacy is not actually invested in writing itself. This may help to address both possible criticisms. The three categories are actually culturally valued cognitive functions. Skilled users of highly developed technologies of writing express or enact these functions through particular written genres. But the cognitive functions aren’t mysteriously embedded in the genres themselves or in writing per se. In fact, in all probability, they have been learnt concurrently. As we will see in Chapter 6, education systems, and universities in particular, privilege the kinds of extended writing I have been referring to, and this gives some of these written forms status – so it’s easy to see how we can confuse the two. For the time being though, I want to underline that the kind of writing that accompanies carefully considered and sustained thinking is culturally valued. However, if the cognitive functions it embodies really are independent of writing we might well expect that they could be expressed in other ways.

So, could reflection be effectively achieved by other means? Technologies for recording have become so common that the idea of creating an audio or video diary is certainly possible for anyone with a smartphone. Keeping a diary can be a useful way of reflecting on experience and is widely used for personal and professional purposes. So could audio or video diaries work in the same way as written reflections? In therapeutic settings, where reflecting on problematic relationships, compulsive behaviours or dependency are regular themes, journaling is a well-established approach. But not all those in therapy are comfortable with, or confident in, keeping a written diary and, as a result, audio diaries have become an acceptable alternative. Anecdotal evidence seems to support the view that the key ingredient is reflection, rather than the medium used for that reflection. And of course, there are a whole variety of personal and professional practices that depend upon and use reflection. Vlogging (keeping a video blog) is another example of how personal reflections on experience find expression in new forms. Although it has often been argued that writing is easier to scan and search in ways that make higher levels of abstraction and synthesis possible, such operations can now be done quite easily in audio and video files. Reflection, it seems, is not the exclusive province of the written form.

Similarly, the function of connection, as defined above, can also be achieved effectively through other modes. Take the moving image as an example. Movies are not simply written narratives transferred to the screen – they have their own distinctive techniques of expression and representation which make comparisons with print fiction problematic and often unproductive – but they do offer similar possibilities for thinking at a more abstract level. We might easily substitute the phrase thinking with the moving image for thinking with writing in this context. Finally, and following on the previous examples, there seems no good reason to suggest that written elucidation is inherently superior to other approaches. For example, the lecture, or the TED talk, is an effective way of developing ideas and still stands as a mode of elucidation, even if some kind of writing is used either in preparation or as a support (for instance, if Powerpoint slides are used).

Despite all of this, writing still matters. It matters precisely because it is used to do culturally important work. And it matters, because of its history of use, both for these and other purposes too. After all, we have access to the thoughts of Socrates and Confucius precisely because those thoughts were committed to writing and translated into print form. Although those philosophies can be presented in other media, they exemplify the prestigious influence of thinking with writing. In other words, what I am arguing for here amounts to a cultural-historical perspective on the importance of writing. Such a perspective offers us a useful way of understanding how printed books, as a particular form of writing, have gained such a high status in society. It also helps in accounting for how powerful social groups and institutions have organized and asserted influential cultural practices around the production and distribution of the book. In the West that influence has been secured by religious, educational and legal institutions, and developed through a wide range of civic and commercial organizations as we will see in the second part of this book.

4.4 Bookspace

So far then, I have argued that one of the most valuable ways we use writing is in supporting and recording what I have called ‘carefully considered’ and ‘sustained’ thinking. I am not, however, suggesting that writing has a monopoly on such things, or that it is the only aspect of writing worth considering. Writing also combines with many quite ordinary and everyday routines as we will see later. But having raised the idea of the power and possibility of extended writing, I want to disentangle this from any direct associations with the print book as a material object – because, when we use a description like ‘thinking with writing’ or the concept of ‘extended writing’, that’s often the first image that comes to mind. I use the term ‘bookspace’¹⁰ as a way of drawing attention to that particular image and to connect back to the idea of the book as a thing – a very particular kind of graphic space with a specific history. The problem here is one of disentangling the status of books as objects from the verbal messages they confer. A couple of examples will illustrate the point.

The first example is concerned with the late Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee. In early 2022, the UK government chose to celebrate this event by providing every child in a state-funded primary school with a free commemorative book. Queen Elizabeth: a Platinum Jubilee Celebration, published by Dorling Kindersley, cost the taxpayer 12 million pounds – and this at time when school funding was under pressure and school resources seriously squeezed. Aside from this, bolstering monarchy was a touchy subject for the Principalities, increasingly at odds with Westminster, and some stormy debate ensued. In the end, copies of the book were distributed to school children in England and Northern Ireland. Schools in Wales and Scotland had to opt-in following regional criticism of the book’s Anglo-centric bias. In this first example, it turns out that the idea of a book to mark a national event became contentious because of its content and the viewpoints expressed in it.

The second example illustrates a fascination with the form of a book, rather than its content. To acknowledge esteemed fiction writer Ian McEwan’s new work, The Lessons,¹¹ a special collector’s edition was published by Jonathan Cape. Pitched to a very specific audience of book lovers, the publicity quite overtly targeted both the appearance and the rarity of the book. An extract from the publicity material¹² reads as follows:

The book in question is elevated (if that’s the most appropriate word) to a highly desirable, collectible item. The quality of the paper, the typeface and the way in which the book is bound are given detailed treatment – and all this for a work with a mixed reception from literary critics. Fetishizing the book in this sort of way has quite a long history.¹³ We might think, for instance, of the passionate evocation of what it is to be a bibliophile in Benjamin’s Unpacking My Library¹⁴ and the prestige value of specific book collections and private libraries.

But books enter our lives in many different ways and their particular material form allows them to function in all sorts of different ways – as door stops, flower presses or as headrests for practitioners of the Alexander technique. We’re accustomed to seeing books as decorative items in houses, in hotels and pubs. Emma Smith,¹⁵ in a very entertaining exploration of the book form, introduces us to the idea of ‘shelfies’ – those shelves of books which form the backdrop for many a videocall or Zoom meeting. And, even though the book may no longer be the most dominant form of writing, or the sort of reading that we do on a daily basis, it still enjoys an important place in the cultural imaginary. It seems as if any book-related endeavour can feed off its prestige value. The recent attention given to a technique called fore-edge painting is a contemporary example of this, and one that highlights an interesting interweaving of new media and print book. Maisie Matilda revived the Medieval practice of painting on the opening edge of a book’s pages, first by showing her painting process on TikTok and then later, as her following grew, by selling her work on Etsy.

4.5 Misleading Writing

In the beginning of this chapter, I explored the influential idea that writing has distinctive or beneficial qualities that have significantly contributed to the development of individual and collective life. Although there are undoubtedly ways in which we could see writing in this way – as a transformative technology – a cultural-historical view of the social practices associated with writing suggests we should be more cautious. Writing isn’t an inherently positive force. In fact, it turns out that the temptation to assume that what is written down is accurate, authoritative or even truthful can lead us into all sorts of trouble. The written word can deceive, dominate, misdirect and manipulate us. Texts can twist the truth, promote bias or misinformation, they can shape perceptions as well as exert a pernicious influence on society. They can even lead nations to war. Some of the worst ideological excesses and human atrocities of the twentieth century were based on ideas promulgated through books.¹⁶ And often the kinds of religious fanaticism and radicalization that lead to violence are propped up by particular readings of sacred texts.

Ideas that incite hatred continue to circulate in our digital age, and as we know, propaganda and fake news are prevalent on social media. The potential for writing to distort truth or simply to influence public opinion is ever present in contemporary society. Our personal lives are also implicated. Writing that offends, upsets or threatens is unfortunately quite commonly reported in digital communication. Trolls would still be seen as mythical creatures from Scandinavian folklore if the word had not been appropriated to describe those who post inflammatory comments on sites like Twitter and Facebook or harass individuals with hurtful or threatening messages. Such is the reach and influence of digital communication in the contemporary world that we must acknowledge that writing still matters – both for the benefits that it can contribute and the harm that it might cause.