A writing material, also called a writing medium, is a surface that can be written on with suitable instruments, or used for symbolic or representational drawings. Building materials on which writings or drawings are produced are not included. The gross characterization of writing materials is by the material constituting the writing surface (for example, paper) and the number, size, usage, and storage configuration of multiple surfaces (for example, paper sheets) into a single object. Writing materials are often paired with specific types of writing instruments. Other important attributes of writing material are its reusability, permanence, and resistance to fraudulent misuse.
Because drawing preceded writing, the first remains of writing materials are the stone walls of the caves on which cave paintings were drawn. Another precursor was tally sticks used to record the count of objects or the passage of days or other discrete units of time. Tally sticks have been found made of wood and bone. Knotted ropes and similar materials were also used for tallies. Such materials did not take a great deal of preparation for their use for drawing or writing. Animal hides also had potential for use as a material for writing or drawing, although the drawings and writings may have been decorative or to convey status or religious meaning. Among the barks of trees, birch bark is very well suited for use as a writing material and was used in Northern Europe and among native peoples in North America.
Four other classes of material were sometimes used for writing: clay, wax, cloth, and metal. The value of metal for useful implements may have made it less than useful for practical writing and drawing. The hardness of many metals that made them useful also made it an inconvenient material for many kinds of writing. But foils or sheets of soft metals like lead were usable. Lead sheets were used for curse tablets, as well as personal correspondence.
Writing seems to have become more widespread with the invention of papyrus in Egypt. Parchment, using sheepskins left after the wool was removed for cloth, was sometimes cheaper than papyrus, which had to be imported from outside of Egypt. To save money on expensive papyrus, Egyptians would wash off and reuse it. [1] With the invention of wood-pulp paper, the cost of writing material began a steady decline.
Cloth probably shared its mode of use with animal skins. Clay introduces the useful combination of extreme ease of making the inscription with the potential for rendering it fairly permanent. Unglazed pottery can readily accept inscriptions even after firing. Wax offers another novel combination of advantages: a reusable surface, easily inscribed and erased, and an easy combination with materials like wood that give it durability. Stone tablets, clay and wooden writing tablets, and wax-covered wooden tablets are some of the first specialized configurations of materials in flat surfaces specifically for writing.
Unglazed pottery shards were used almost as a kind of scratch paper, as ostraka, for tax receipts, and, in Athens, to record the individual nominations of Greek leaders for ostracism.
Papyrus was first used during the 4th millenniumBC in Egypt. In the second centuryBC, it was replaced in parts of the Mediterranean by parchment made from treated animal hides. Parchments used skins from several different animals, and varied significantly in qualities like texture and color. Parchment was ultimately replaced as the result of the increasing availability of paper.
Palm leaf manuscript.
On the Indian subcontinent, principal writing media were bhurjapatra made from birch bark, and palm leaf manuscript. Palm leaf manuscript was also the major source for writing and painting in South and Southeast Asian countries including Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia.[2] The use of paper began only after the 10th century.
In China, early writing materials included animal bones, later silk,[3]bamboo and wooden slips,[4] until the 2nd century when paper was invented. The invention of paper is attributed to a eunuch of the imperial court called Cai Lun in 105AD[3] However, paper was not introduced to Europe for another thousand years following a battle in 751AD where a few paper-makers were captured, and thus the technology spread from Baghdad westward, only reaching Spain in the 12th century.[citation needed]
Paper
Cai Lun used old rags, hemp, tree bark, and fishing nets to develop a method of paper-making fundamentally similar to that still used today.[3] 
The Islamic world acquired the art of papermaking in the 8th century, taught by Chinese prisoners who had been taken during eastward expeditions. Eventually, the Muslims brought papermaking to the Indian subcontinent and to Europe.[5] An early Greek name for paper was bagdatikos, meaning 'from Baghdad'. The craft of paper-making reached Spain in the twelfth century, and at subsequent hundred-year intervals arrived in Italy, Germany, and England. Yet for centuries after paper became widely available in Europe, vellum and parchment were preferred for documents that had to be long-lasting. The basic ingredients of paper were linen and cotton, soaked in water and beaten into a smooth pulp, or slurry. As the pulp was drained through a wire screen, the slurry's interlocking fibers matted together, ready for the next step. First, a press squeezed out water from the sheet, preparatory to drying; then, the application of a gelatin coating readied the sheet's surface for ink.[6]
In the late 18th century, paper was still made from cloth gathered by ragpickers. James Whatman and John Baskerville (1706–1775) invented a method for producing perfectly smooth paper using a fine wire mesh that left no lines from the mould on the page.[7]
Electronic media
Electronic media have utilized the keyboard developed for the typewriter, electrical and electronic circuitry, and storage devices, and the viewing screen developed for reading electronic signals to provide another form of writing material. The Palm Pilot was invented in 1996 and further changed the idea of electronic devices as writing materials. It was the first consumer product that allowed people to write directly on an electronic screen using a stylus, rather than having to input their writing using a keyboard.[8]
↑ Dard, Hunter (1978). Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (2nded.). New York: Dover Publications. p.48. ISBN0-486-23619-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
↑ Murray, Stuart (2009). The Library: An Illustrated History. Skyhorse. p.51. ISBN978-1-60239-706-4.
The codex was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term "codex" is now reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper.
A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
In textual studies, a palimpsest is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin and was expensive and not readily available, so, in the interest of economy, a page was often re-used by scraping off the previous writing. In colloquial usage, the term palimpsest is also used in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to denote an object made or worked upon for one purpose and later reused for another; for example, a monumental brass the reverse blank side of which has been re-engraved.
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of young animals such as lambs and young calves. The generic term animal membrane is sometimes used by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between parchment and vellum.
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
Papermaking is the manufacture of paper and cardboard, which are used widely for printing, writing, and packaging, among many other purposes. Today almost all paper is made using industrial machinery, while handmade paper survives as a specialized craft and a medium for artistic expression.
A notebook is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking and more.
A stylus is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision when using touchscreens. It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styluses are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely used writing tool is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille.
Sizing or size is a substance that is applied to, or incorporated into, other materials—especially papers and textiles—to act as a protective filler or glaze. Sizing is used in papermaking and textile manufacturing to change the absorption and wear characteristics of those materials.
The history of books starts with the development of writing, and various other inventions such as paper and printing, and continues through to the modern-day business of book printing. The earliest knowledge society has on the history of books actually predates what would conventionally be called "books" today and begins with tablets, scrolls, and sheets of papyrus. The current format that we consider to be books, with separate sheets fastened together rather than a scroll, is called a codex. Then hand-bound, expensive, and elaborate manuscripts appeared in codex form. These gave way to press-printed volumes and eventually led to the mass-printed volumes prevalent today. Contemporary books may even have no physical presence with the advent of the e-book. The book also became more accessible to the disabled with the advent of Braille and audiobook.
Paper craft is a collection of crafts using paper or card as the primary artistic medium for the creation of two or three-dimensional objects. Paper and card stock lend themselves to a wide range of techniques and can be folded, curved, bent, cut, glued, molded, stitched, or layered. Papermaking by hand is also a paper craft.
A writing implement or writing instrument is an object used to produce writing. Writing consists of different figures, lines, and or forms. Most of these items can be also used for other functions such as painting, drawing and technical drawing, but writing instruments generally have the ordinary requirement to create a smooth, controllable line.
The conservation and restoration of illuminated manuscripts is the care and treatment of illuminated manuscripts which have cultural and historical significance so that they may be viewed, read, and studied now and in the future. It is a specialty case of the conservation and restoration of parchment within the field of conservation and restoration of books, manuscripts, documents and ephemera.
Printing and writing papers are paper grades used for newspapers, magazines, catalogs, books, notebooks, commercial printing, business forms, stationeries, copying and digital printing. About 1/3 of the total pulp and paper marked is printing and writing papers. The pulp or fibers used in printing and writing papers are extracted from wood using a chemical or mechanical process.
Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses, herbivore dung, or other vegetable sources in water. Once the water is drained through a fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed on the surface, it can be pressed and dried.
Mummy paper is paper that is claimed to be made from the linen wrappings and other fibers from Egyptian mummies imported to America circa 1855. The existence of this paper has not been conclusively confirmed, but it has been widely discussed.
Tree-free paper, also known as no tree paper, offers an alternative to traditional wood-pulp paper due to its unique raw material composition. This type of paper is considered more eco-friendly especially when evaluating its entire life cycle.
Paper is a thin nonwoven material traditionally made from a combination of milled plant and textile fibres. The first paper-like plant-based writing sheet was papyrus in Egypt, but the first true papermaking process was documented in China during the Eastern Han period, traditionally attributed to the court official Cai Lun. This plant-puree conglomerate produced by pulp mills and paper mills was used for writing, drawing, and money. During the 8th century, Chinese paper making spread to the Islamic world, replacing papyrus. By the 11th century, papermaking was brought to Europe, where it replaced animal-skin-based parchment and wood panels. By the 13th century, papermaking was refined with paper mills using waterwheels in Spain. Later improvements to the papermaking process came in 19th century Europe with the invention of wood-based papers.
Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers along an edge with a thick needle and strong thread. One can also use loose-leaf rings, binding posts, twin-loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs, but they last for a shorter time. Next, one encloses the bound stack of paper in a cover. Finally, one places an attractive cover onto the boards, and features the publisher's information and artistic decorations.
The conservation and restoration of papyrus material is an activity dedicated to the preservation and protection of objects of historical and personal value made from papyrus from Ancient Egypt.
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