Questions tagged [writing]
Questions related to the means of human communication using signs and symbols representing language or emotions, which can be preserved physically or electronically.
76 questions
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Did people comment on Yukio Mishima's sexuality while he was alive?
Yukio Mishima had many run-ins with same-gender attraction:
He visited gay bars
His novel Confessions of a Mask has homosexual elements and is similar to his own life
His novel Forbidden Colors has ...
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What is this statue from Iraq/Babylon, and what does the cuneiform on it mean?
This statue belongs to a family friend, who worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq around the time of the 2003 invasion. He says that after he returned home, he received this statue in the ...
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When citation of other author started to be formalized?
A question here about Ptolemy made me wonder when the authors started to cross-reference to give strength to their arguments.
Wikipedia states (without source) that one of the first bibliographers was ...
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When, and in what manner, did horizontal writing in East Asian languages switch from right-to-left to left-to-right?
East Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese) imported the Western style of horizontal writing as contact with the West increased, but it was always still written in the traditional ...
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When did people start to care about right grammar and spelling?
Languages developed over the years to make it easy to communicate and exchange complex ideas. For example the whole point of the phonetic writing system is to be able to write down complex ideas ...
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Did people write on loose leaf or directly in notebook in middle age?
Did Isaac Newton handwrite directly in notebooks or on loose leafs and then make notebooks from this papers?
In other words, could a blank notebook be bought or did people first have to write on loose ...
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What are the evidences, accounts and notes that prove ancient Indian empires and Chinese empires were friendly states before 300 BC
What are the evidences, accounts and notes that prove ancient empires of India and China were friendly states before 300 BC?
I am personally searching for descriptions/writings of well known travelers ...
user65081
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Why did so many places only had writing after being conquered by a major empire? [closed]
I have been realizing that this is a recurring pattern in much of history. Many places only had their first written accounts after being conquered by a major empire. Much of Europe (such Spain, France,...
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Is this name transcribed correctly from cursive writing from 1866?
I am trying to transcribe a list of names which were written by a child, in cursive, in 1866 (in the US). A few of the letters are unclear to me, especially capitals. Thanks to a few early commenter,...
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Was an uppercase j used to replace an uppercase i letter on German monument inscriptions?
I have seen it on two grave inscriptions (photo). Both were of on a grave of a person called Ida but there was Jda on the grave inscription. They lived in the 19th and 20th centuries in Central Europe,...
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Was writing material for to-do list accessible in medieval Europe?
My workflow is rather dependent on having a notebook or just scraps of paper around at all times, so I can quickly jot down things that I need to remember. Today, paper for such purposes is almost ...
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When did subtractive notation become common for Roman numerals?
The additive notation of Roman numerals for 4 and 9 is IIII and VIIII. The subtractive notation is IV and IX.
Wikipedia doesn't go into detail about which form was known and popular during which ...
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Did ancient Axumites use papyrus for writing?
Why are there Ge'ez texts only on rock and not on parchment or papyrus before the 4th century CE?
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Are Chinese and Iranian "blocky" writing styles related?
Both China and Iran have character styles that are characterized by being (at least approximately) based on a square raster and by "filling up the plane" in the sense that if you take any ...
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Why do many Indian languages have different alphabets?
I see that German, English and French mostly share the same basic set of alphabet and these are languages are spoken by whole countries but if you go to India, there is a state with a new alphabet set ...
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How to explain the apparent discrepancy in the use of papyrus vs. clay tablets between Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia?
Nowadays, the papyrus plant apparently thrives relatively well in certain sections of the Tigris-Euphrates system. With that in mind, one naturally wonders why in ancient times the Sumerians and ...
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How did letters become published?
I have several books of collected works of various historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson, John Newton, all of which contain many personal letters. Also, in reading William Wilberforce's ...
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Were there clay printing presses in the bronze age?
I'm no lithographer, but it seems to me that making a die cast out of metal, wood or stone, which could be pressed in to clay tablets to produce copies of its textual contents, would be easier than ...
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What is the earliest recorded female name in history?
There is already a question that gives various possibilities for the first name that we have record of in Who is the earliest recorded person?, but most seem to be male figures. What is the first ...
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Have any palimpsests been found in medieval Icelandic (saga) literature?
Old Norse mythology and history are mostly known through Icelandic medieval parchements. Have those been found to include palimpsests, like medieval parchement in Europe has?
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What is the background of writing the c in McLastname with the small c on the top of the line with a line under it?
In a recent conversation with my mom she mentioned how as a child she would write her last name with the small c parallel to the top of the big M and a hyphen under it. (See example below, not real ...
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What is the oldest quote or poem in known history?
What is the oldest quote, poem, words of wisdom ever written in known history?
I'm guessing it's Kemetian or Babylonian.
I've read some on the internet that I know from memory but cannot verify them, ...
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Was the alphabet invented only once?
It's a widely repeated claim that the alphabet was invented only once:
Britannica:
The invention of the alphabet is a major achievement of Western culture. It is also unique; the alphabet was ...
user38526
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Was it ever common practice to make "wax" seals out of bread (especially in the mid-1800s)?
In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Purloined Letter", there is this quote in which a seal on a letter is replaced by bread:
D-- rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the ...
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For whom would this priest write a long geographical report on his parish?
In 1777, the assistant pastor of Tamazula, Nueva Vizcaya composed a detailed report on the local geography, climate, natural history, and mineralogy, listing the many plants and animals and few ...
user18968
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Why did people not tend to keep records or consider future consequences until very recently?
When I'm talking about recordkeeping, I don't mean cave paintings, or anything like that. Instead, I'm referencing writing down how something was repaired onto the object so people know what changes ...
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Where does the Kurrent letter-form for E come from?
The old German cursives, both Suetterlin and Kurrent, have several peculiar features compared to modern German cursive handwriting. One is a double-stroke letter-shape for E. Most introductory ...
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What was the exact nature, extent and use of Near Eastern clay tokens? [closed]
My current knowledge of Near Eastern clay tokens is:
They were developed and used in the Fertile Crescent and Anatolia from 8000 BC
They were an accounting system with a one to one correspondence ...
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Why did quill pens persist until the early 19th century despite the capacity to make metal dip pens?
I recently toured Jefferson's Monticello and I was struck during the tour of the library by the description of some of the challenges that Jefferson faced using quill pens.
This seemed particularly ...
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Where to find a comprehensive list of proto-cuneiform Sumerian glyphs?
I'm looking for representations and meanings of the logographs of the Uruk period (3500–3000 BC), such as those on the Kish tablet. I've only been able to find a few examples, but over 1000 are known. ...
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Did Romans keep tax records of individuals in Palestine around Jesus' lifetime?
This question in Christianity.SE asks how would Jesus write his name in civil records. This answer denies (based on the lack of positive evidence) that Jesus ever wrote his name in a civil record. ...
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Are there any important biographies of nobodies?
Biographies usually cover interesting people who said and did notable things. I'm curious about lives notable just for their contexts: the stories of unremarkable people in historically remarkable ...
user18968
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What is the history of the check mark / tick mark?
Wikipedia has an interesting article on the meaning of the check mark "✓" in different cultures. In the English-speaking world, "✓" generally has a positive connotation — "yes, OK, correct, ...
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What was the primary motivation for a historical figure like Xenophon to create an extensive collection of written material?
Xenophon of Athens created a large amount of written material even by today's standards. Did he create this work knowing it would be read by future generations, or was it for his own satisfaction? I ...
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Where and when has Thucydides been studied?
Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian war between Sparta and Athens, of which he was a contemporary and participating general, is studied still today in war academies and by political scientists ...
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Why did the Republic of China retract its simplified Chinese characters?
The image below shows part of the list of simplified Chinese characters introduced by the Republic of China Department of Education in 1935. They were retracted in 1936, so China continued to use ...
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Did "The Cosmic Race" inform "The Anthropophagic Manifesto"?
José Vasconcelos published The Cosmic Race in 1925. In his view Mexico could construct a new, better race from the diverse origins of its people.
Oswald de Andrade published his Anthropophagic ...
user18968
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Are there recommended practices for writing about oppressed peoples?
This question is about responsible historiography. History as written by winners tends to devalue and misrepresent the experiences of subordinate groups (see Textbooks: Zinn People’s History; Labour: ...
user18968
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Where can I find an explanation of the variations in style of Egyptian hieroglyphs?
I've seen that Egyptian hieroglyphs are not always written or drawn identically.
Long time ago I made a trip in Egypt and saw, in the Valley of the Kings, a tomb with hieroglyphs on the walls that ...
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The origin of symbols used for transferring information over large distances [closed]
The information about the origin of writing systems is a bit difficult to piece together, to find when the first accounts of "writing used to transfer information over large distances". For example, ...
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Were the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs ever discovered really found in Qustul in Ancient Nubia?
In a comment posted on an answer to the question, 'Does modern scholarship accept an Ethiopian origin for Egyptian hieroglyphs?', the user that posted the question wrote:
"The oldest kingdom in ...
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Does modern scholarship accept an Ethiopian or Nubian origin for Egyptian hieroglyphs?
Diodorus Siculus made the claim that the Hieroglyphs were actually an Ethiopian script, which was held sacred by the Egyptians and was learned and transmitted only within the priestly families of ...
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Which French Revolutionary figure thought black slaves could oversee monkeys for labor?
I'm operating off of fuzzy memory for this question but I know I have encountered this bizarre (and offensive: fair warning) historical figure who I am inquiring about here before in my previous ...
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What was the medium for Marcus Aurelius's Meditations?
I imagine Romans using papyrus and quills on a still table, allowing time for the ink to dry, which may not be possible in a battlefield. I once saw a documentary which depicts him walking off in ...
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Did China ever consider a phonetic writing system?
I was surprised to learn the following about the Japanese and Korean languages:
Japanese used a lot of Chinese characters in their language and had no phonetic system, until around the year 800 when ...
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What did parchment and papyrus cost in the Roman Empire?
How much do we know of the costs of parchment and papyrus in Roman Empire? I'm especially interested in their cost ratio. So far I found some accounts for the other ends of the antiquity: in 301 a ...
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What does this Rx glyph mean in what looks like Latin?
What does this glyph (red) mean? Also, what usage was there for it and the other glyph that looks like a colon (blue)?
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What was the first scientific article to give a recognisably "modern" citation to another article?
It's easy to find online citation indices; however they typically only cover recent articles, e.g. Scopus has coverage since 2004. Indeed citation indices in paper form seem to have been introduced in ...
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Was there self-censorship in private correspondence in the early 19th Century?
I've been reading collections of letters and journals (generally relating to the Napoleonic Wars) published in the first half of the 19th century. Often these contain words that have been partially ...
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Are there no written records of Sanskrit before Rigveda?
Rigveda is considered the oldest written record of Sanskrit. It has Sanskrit in a very developed form. I wonder if there are any records of Sanskrit before Rigveda which show the language being used ...
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