Writing material

Last updated March 31, 2024

A writing material 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 (for example, a spiral notebook). 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.

History

Archaeology

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 discrete time units (days). 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.

Papyrus fragment from the late Middle Kingdom in Ancient Egypt Papyrs-Harrageh-1.jpg — Papyrus fragment from the late Middle Kingdom in Ancient Egypt

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. 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.

The archaeological record contains either examples of these materials used for drawing or writing or it has indirect indications of their use for writing, drawing, or tallying.

The Quipu or talking knots^[1] were recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by several cultures in the region of Andean South America.^[2] Knotted strings were used by many other cultures such as the ancient Chinese and native Hawaiians,^[3] but such practices should not be confused with the quipu, which refers only to the Andean device.

Common writing materials of the Middle Ages

In Western civilizations, papyrus, which originated in 3,000 B.C.E. in Egypt, was later replaced by parchment made by treating animal hides, a process starting in the second century B.C. in the Mediterranean region^[4] A wide variety of parchments from various animal skins, with different textures, quality, and hue were widely used for codices, religious and cultural texts. This was replaced by the advent and increasing access and availability of paper.

In eastern civilisations such as India, the principal writing media were birch bark or bhurjapatra (Sanskrit) and dried palm leaves. The use of paper began only after the 10th century. However, birch bark and palm leaf continue to be used even today on a limited scale in a rural milieu for the use of horoscopes, wedding invitations, and other cultural uses.

In China, the early material was animal bones, later silk,^[5] bamboo, and wooden slips, 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 105 A.D.^[5] However, paper was not introduced to Europe for another thousand years following a battle in 751 A.D. where a few paper-makers were captured, and thus the technology spread from Baghdad westward, only reaching Spain in the 12th century.^[4]

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.^[5]

The world of Islam 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.^[6] Paper was at first called 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. ^[7]

In the late 18th century, paper was still made from cloth gathered by ragpickers.^[8] Wove Paper was invented by James Whatman and John Baskerville (1706-75). They created a way to produce perfectly smooth paper, using a fine wire mesh that left no lines from the mould on the page.^[9]

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.^[10]

Related Research Articles

A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images. Books are typically composed of many pages, bound together and protected by a cover. Modern bound books were preceded by many other written mediums, such as the codex and the scroll. The book publishing process is the series of steps involved in their creation and dissemination.

The codex was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term codex is often used for ancient manuscript books, with handwritten contents. A codex, much like the modern book, is bound by stacking the pages and securing one set of edges by a variety of methods over the centuries, yet in a form analogous to modern bookbinding. Modern books are divided into paperback and those bound with stiff boards, called hardbacks. Elaborate historical bindings are called treasure bindings. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll, which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. In Japan, concertina-style codices called orihon developed during the Heian period (794–1185) were made of 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Papyrus</span> Writing and implement

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.

Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin, or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellum is prepared for writing and printing on single pages, scrolls, and codices (books).

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.

Quipu are recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America.

Rice paper is a product constructed of paper-like materials made from different plants. These include:

A scroll, also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.

The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributions to the field have come from textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social history and cultural history. Its key purpose is to demonstrate that the book as an object, not just the text contained within it, is a conduit of interaction between readers and words. Analysis of each component part of the book reveals its purpose, where and how it was kept, who read it, ideological and religious beliefs of the period, and whether readers interacted with the text within. Even a lack of evidence of this nature leaves valuable clues about the nature of that particular book.

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, or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through a fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed on the surface, followed by pressing and drying. Although paper was originally made in single sheets by hand, almost all is now made on large machines—some making reels 10 metres wide, running at 2,000 metres per minute and up to 600,000 tonnes a year. It is a versatile material with many uses, including printing, painting, graphics, signage, design, packaging, decorating, writing, and cleaning. It may also be used as filter paper, wallpaper, book endpaper, conservation paper, laminated worktops, toilet tissue, currency, and security paper, or in a number of industrial and construction processes.

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 following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to books:

References

↑ Domenici, Viviano; Domenici, Davide (1996). "Talking Knots of the Inka". Archaeology . Vol. 49, no. 6. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
↑ Neuman, William (January 2, 2016). "Untangling an Accounting Tool and an Ancient Inca Mystery". New York Times . Retrieved January 8, 2016.
↑ Jacobsen, Lyle E. "Use of Knotted String Accounting Records in Old Hawaii and Ancient China". Accounting Historians Journal. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
1 2 Gascolgne, Arthur Bamber. "HISTORY OF WRITING MATERIALS". historyworld.net.
1 2 3 Lyons, Martyn (2011). Books : A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p. 18. ISBN 978-1606060834.
↑ Murray, Stuart (2009). The Library : An Illustrated History. China: Skyhorse Publishing. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-60239-706-4.
↑ Murray, Stuart (2009). The Library : An Illustrated History. China: Skyhorse Publishing. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-60239-706-4.
↑ Lyons, Martyn (2011). Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. p. 99. ISBN 978-1606060834.
↑ Lyons, Martyn (2011). Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty Publications. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-1606060834.
↑ Andrea., Butter (2002). Piloting Palm: the inside story of Palm, Handspring, and the birth of the billion-dollar handheld industry . Pogue, David, 1963-. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0471089656. OCLC 49078768.