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74-728: The Batak script (natively known as Surat Batak , Surat na Sampulu Sia ("the nineteen letters"), or Sisiasia ) is a writing system used to write the Austronesian Batak languages spoken by several million people on the Indonesian island of Sumatra . The script may be derived from the Kawi and Pallava script , ultimately derived from the Brahmi script of India, or from the hypothetical Proto-Sumatran script influenced by Pallava. The Batak magicians and priests or datu used

148-465: A featural system uses symbols representing sub-phonetic elements—e.g. those traits that can be used to distinguish between and analyse a language's phonemes, such as their voicing or place of articulation . The only prominent example of a featural system is the hangul script used to write Korean, where featural symbols are combined into letters, which are in turn joined into syllabic blocks. Many scholars, including John DeFrancis (1911–2009), reject

222-576: A characterization of hangul as a featural system—with arguments including that Korean writers do not themselves think in these terms when writing—or question the viability of Sampson's category altogether. As hangul was consciously created by literate experts, Daniels characterizes it as a "sophisticated grammatogeny " —a writing system intentionally designed for a specific purpose, as opposed to having evolved gradually over time. Other grammatogenies include shorthands developed by professionals and constructed scripts created by hobbyists and creatives, like

296-416: A component related to the character's meaning, and a component that gives a hint for its pronunciation. A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent either syllables or moras —a unit of prosody that is often but not always a syllable in length. The graphemes used in syllabaries are called syllabograms . Syllabaries are best suited to languages with relatively simple syllable structure, since

370-481: A different symbol is needed for every syllable. Japanese, for example, contains about 100 moras, which are represented by moraic hiragana . By contrast, English features complex syllable structures with a relatively large inventory of vowels and complex consonant clusters —making for a total of 15–16,000 distinct syllables. Some syllabaries have larger inventories: the Yi script contains 756 different symbols. An alphabet

444-604: A final, medial and initial forms, which is comparable to initial, or capital, form for the Latin alphabet since the Renaissance . Six letters in Arabic have only one final form, and whenever they occur in a word, there is some space in it that was originally as wide as the space between words. There was also no hyphenation either. In all early manuscripts, words were finished on the next line or, in many Quranic manuscripts, even on

518-418: A five-fold classification of writing systems, comprising pictographic scripts, ideographic scripts, analytic transitional scripts, phonetic scripts, and alphabetic scripts. In practice, writing systems are classified according to the primary type of symbols used, and typically include exceptional cases where symbols function differently. For example, logographs found within phonetic systems like English include

592-610: A lack of punctuation and/or word breaks. One Chinese joke concerns a contract between a landlord and a poor scholar, which was written without punctuation and thus was interpreted in two different ways: Japanese implements extensive use of Chinese characters —called kanji in Japanese. However, due to the radical differences between the Chinese and Japanese languages, writing Japanese exclusively in kanji would make it extremely difficult to read. This can be seen in texts that predate

666-421: A long sentence will not break into new lines. Some computer input methods have put zero-width space instead for word break, which would then break the long sentences into multiple lanes, but the drawback of that method is it will not render the writing correctly. Before typewriter, computer and smartphones changed the way of writing, Arabic was written continuously. That is easy because 22 letters in Arabic have

740-408: A set of defined graphemes, collectively called a script . The concept of the grapheme is similar to that of the phoneme used in the study of spoken languages. Likewise, as many sonically distinct phones may function as the same phoneme depending on speaker, dialect, and context, many visually distinct glyphs (or graphs ) may be identified as the same grapheme. These variant glyphs are known as

814-542: A spoken language, this functions as literacy in a second, acquired language. A single language (e.g. Hindustani ) can be written using multiple writing systems, and a writing system can also represent multiple languages. For example, Chinese characters have been used to write multiple languages throughout the Sinosphere —including the Vietnamese language from at least the 13th century, until their replacement with

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888-548: A table of characters, whereas Chartable could ask or answer the question, "Can (something) be charted?" Chinese does not encounter the problem of incorporating spaces into text because, unlike most writing systems , Chinese characters represent morphemes and not phonemes. Chinese is therefore readable without spaces. Western punctuation was first used in China in the 20th century as a result of interaction with Western culture. However, sentences can still be ambiguous due to

962-400: A vowel. Other vowels, final ŋ , and final velar fricative [x] are indicated by diacritics, which appear above, below, or after the letter. For example, ba is written ba (one letter); bi is written ba.i ( i follows the consonant); bang is written ba ( ŋ is above the consonant); and bing is ba.i . Final consonants are written with the pangolat (here represented by "#"): bam

1036-823: Is ba.ma.# . However, bim is written ba.ma.i.# : the first diacritic belongs to the first consonant, and the second belongs to the second consonant, but both are written at the end of the entire syllable. Unlike most Brahmi-based scripts, Batak does not form consonant conjuncts. The basic characters are called surat . Each consonant has an inherent vowel of /a/ . The script varies by region and language. The major variants are between Karo , Mandailing , Pakpak /Dairi, Simalungun /Timur, and Toba : Alternate forms: ^1 [REDACTED] (used in Mandailing) ^2 [REDACTED] ^3 [REDACTED] ^4 [REDACTED] ^5 [REDACTED] ^6 [REDACTED] Diacritics are used to change

1110-493: Is a set of letters , each of which generally represent one of the segmental phonemes in a spoken language. However, these correspondences are rarely uncomplicated, and spelling is often mediated by other factors than just which sounds are used by a speaker. The word alphabet is derived from alpha and beta , the names for the first two letters in the Greek alphabet . An abjad is an alphabet whose letters only represent

1184-438: Is a visual and tactile notation representing language . The symbols used in writing correspond systematically to functional units of either a spoken or signed language . This definition excludes a broader class of symbolic markings, such as drawings and maps. A text is any instance of written material, including transcriptions of spoken material. The act of composing and recording a text may be referred to as writing , and

1258-468: Is an alphabetic writing system whose basic signs denote consonants with an inherent vowel and where consistent modifications of the basic sign indicate other following vowels than the inherent one. In an abugida, there may be a sign for k with no vowel, but also one for ka (if a is the inherent vowel), and ke is written by modifying the ka sign in a consistent way with how la would be modified to get le . In many abugidas, modification consists of

1332-420: Is continuous, there was no need to add spaces. Typically, the reader of the text was a trained performer, who would have already memorised the content and breaks of the script. During the reading performances, the scroll acted as a cue sheet and therefore did not require in-depth reading. The lack of word parsing forced the reader to distinguish elements of the script without a visual aid, but it also presented

1406-451: Is defined as a potentially permanent means of recording information, then these systems do not qualify as writing at all, since the symbols disappear as soon as they are used. Instead, these transient systems serve as signals . Writing systems may be characterized by how text is graphically divided into lines, which are to be read in sequence: For example, English and many other Western languages are written in horizontal rows that begin at

1480-586: Is no evidence of contact between China and the literate peoples of the Near East, and the Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches for representing aspects of sound and meaning are distinct. The Mesoamerican writing systems , including Olmec and the Maya script , were also invented independently. The first known alphabetic writing appeared before 2000 BC, and was used to write a Semitic language spoken in

1554-513: Is still in use in Thai script , other Southeast Asian abugidas : ( Burmese , Lao , Khmer , Javanese , Balinese , Sundanese script ), and in languages that use Chinese characters ( Chinese and Japanese ). However, modern vernacular Chinese differentiates itself from ancient scriptio continua through its use of punctuation, although this method of separation was borrowed from the West only in

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1628-650: Is the Brahmic family of scripts, however, which includes nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia. The name abugida is derived from the first four characters of an order of the Geʽez script used in some contexts. It was coined as a linguistic term by Peter T. Daniels ( b.  1951 ), who borrowed it from the Ethiopian languages. Originally proposed as a category by Geoffrey Sampson ( b.  1944 ),

1702-996: Is used in various models either as a synonym for "morphographic", or as a specific subtype where the basic unit of meaning written is the word . Even with morphographic writing, there remains a correspondence between graphemes and the sounds of speech, but the pronunciation values of the units of meaning is not what is being encoded firstly by the writing system. Many classifications define three primary categories, where phonographic systems are subdivided into syllabic and alphabetic (or segmental ) systems. Syllabaries use symbols called syllabograms to represent syllables or moras . Alphabets use symbols called letters that correspond to spoken phonemes—or more technically to diaphonemes . Alphabets are generally classified into three subtypes, with abjads having letters for consonants , pure alphabets having letters for both consonants and vowels , and abugidas having characters that correspond to consonant–vowel pairs. David Diringer proposed

1776-440: Is used throughout the study of writing systems, the precise interpretations of and definitions for concepts often vary depending on the theoretical model employed by the researcher. A grapheme is the basic functional unit of a writing system. Graphemes are generally defined as minimally significant elements which, when taken together, comprise the set of symbols from which texts may be constructed. All writing systems require

1850-447: Is well known for lacking punctuation for many centuries. Modern versions of the language gradually amended those features. The entire Swedish Rök runestone is written in scriptio continua , which poses problems for scholars attempting to translate it. One example is a phrase repeated several times, sakumukmini . Interpretations proposed include sagum Ygg minni 'let us say the memory to Yggr ', sagum mógminni 'let us say

1924-428: The allographs of a grapheme: For example, the lowercase letter ⟨a⟩ may be represented by the double-storey | a | and single-storey | ɑ | shapes, or others written in cursive, block, or printed styles. The choice of a particular allograph may be influenced by the medium used, the writing instrument used, the stylistic choice of the writer, the preceding and succeeding graphemes in

1998-606: The Etruscan alphabet (itself ultimately derived from the Greek alphabet). Initially, Latin texts commonly marked word divisions by points, but later on the Romans came to follow the Greek practice of scriptio continua . Before and after the advent of the codex , Latin and Greek script was written on scrolls by slave scribes. The role of the scribes was to simply record everything they heard to create documentation. Because speech

2072-495: The Latin alphabet and Chinese characters , glyphs are made up of lines or strokes. Linear writing is most common, but there are non-linear writing systems where glyphs consist of other types of marks, such as in cuneiform and Braille . Egyptian hieroglyphs and Maya script were often painted in linear outline form, but in formal contexts they were carved in bas-relief . The earliest examples of writing are linear: while cuneiform

2146-610: The Sinai Peninsula . Most of the world's alphabets either descend directly from this Proto-Sinaitic script , or were directly inspired by its design. Descendants include the Phoenician alphabet ( c.  1050 BC ), and its child in the Greek alphabet ( c.  800 BC ). The Latin alphabet , which descended from the Greek alphabet, is by far the most common script used by writing systems. Several approaches have been taken to classify writing systems, with

2220-508: The Tengwar script designed by J. R. R. Tolkien to write the Elven languages he also constructed. Many of these feature advanced graphic designs corresponding to phonological properties. The basic unit of writing in these systems can map to anything from phonemes to words. It has been shown that even the Latin script has sub-character features. In linear writing , which includes systems like

2294-408: The ampersand ⟨&⟩ and the numerals ⟨0⟩ , ⟨1⟩ , etc.—which correspond to specific words ( and , zero , one , etc.) and not to the underlying sounds. A logogram is a character that represents a morpheme within a language. Chinese characters represent the only major logographic writing systems still in use: they have historically been used to write

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2368-511: The interpunct , especially in monuments and inscriptions. The earliest texts in Classical Greek that used the Greek alphabet, as opposed to Linear B , were formatted in a constant string of capital letters from right to left. Later, that evolved to boustrophedon , which included lines written in alternating directions. The Latin language and the related Italic languages first came to be written using alphabetic scripts adapted from

2442-404: The uppercase and lowercase forms of the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet (with these graphemes corresponding to various phonemes), punctuation marks (mostly non-phonemic), and a handful of other symbols, such as numerals. Writing systems may be regarded as complete if they are able to represent all that may be expressed in the spoken language, while a partial writing system cannot represent

2516-622: The varieties of Chinese , as well as Japanese , Korean , Vietnamese , and other languages of the Sinosphere . As each character represents a single unit of meaning, many different logograms are required to write all the words of a language. If the logograms do not adequately represent all meanings and words of a language, written language can be confusing or ambiguous to the reader. Logograms are sometimes conflated with ideograms , symbols which graphically represent abstract ideas; most linguists now reject this characterization: Chinese characters are often semantic–phonetic compounds, which include

2590-513: The "space" character when its use would be invalid and their use would not be. As another example, so-called camel case —in which the first letter of each word is capitalized—has become part of the culture of many computer programming languages . In this context, names of variables and subroutines as well as other identifiers are rendered easier to read, as in MaxDataRate . Camel case can also eliminate ambiguity: CharTable might name

2664-752: The 19th and 20th centuries. Before this, the only forms of punctuation found in Chinese writings were marks to denote quotes, proper nouns, and emphasis. Modern Tibetic languages also employ a form of scriptio continua ; while they punctuate syllables, they do not use spacing between units of meaning. Latin text in scriptio continua with typical capital letters, taken from Cicero 's De finibus bonorum et malorum : Which in modern punctuation is: With ancient Latin punctuation is: NEQVE·PORRO·QVISQVAM·EST·QVI·DOLOREM·IPSVM·QVIA·DOLOR·SIT·AMET·CONSECTETVR·ADIPISCI·VELIT Greek text in scriptio continua with typical capital letters, taken from Hesiod 's Theogony : Which in modern punctuation is: Hebrew text

2738-478: The 20th century due to Western influence. Several scripts used in the Philippines and Indonesia, such as Hanunoo , are traditionally written with lines moving away from the writer, from bottom to top, but are read horizontally left to right; however, Kulitan , another Philippine script, is written top-to-bottom in columns arranged right-to-left. Ogham is written bottom-to-top and read vertically, commonly on

2812-581: The Batak lands, first German missionaries and, from 1878 onwards, the Dutch, the Batak script was, alongside the Roman script, taught in the schools, and teaching and religious materials were printed in the Batak script. Soon after the first World War the missionaries decided to discontinue printing books in the Batak script. The script soon fell out of use and is now only used for ornamental purposes. The Batak script

2886-477: The Batak script mainly for magical texts and divinatory purposes. It is unknown how many non-specialists were literate in the Batak script, but judging from the widespread tradition of writing love laments, especially among the Karo, Simalungun, and Angkola-Mandailing Batak, it is likely that a considerable part of the non-specialist population was able to read and write the Batak script. After the arrival of Europeans in

2960-494: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet in the 20th century. In the first several decades of modern linguistics as a scientific discipline, linguists often characterized writing as merely the technology used to record speech—which was treated as being of paramount importance, for what was seen as the unique potential for its study to further the understanding of human cognition. While certain core terminology

3034-415: The West, the oldest Greek and Latin inscriptions used word dividers to separate words in sentences; however, Classical Greek and late Classical Latin both employed scriptio continua as the norm. Although scriptio continua is evidenced in most Classic Greek and Classic Latin manuscripts, different writing styles are depicted in documents that date back even further. Classical Latin often used

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3108-635: The act of viewing and interpreting the text as reading . The relationship between writing and language more broadly has been the subject of philosophical analysis as early as Aristotle (384–322 BC). While the use of language is universal across human societies, writing is not—having first emerged much more recently, and only having been independently invented in a handful of locations throughout history. While most spoken languages have not been written, all written languages have been predicated on an existing spoken language. When those with signed languages as their first language read writing associated with

3182-415: The addition of a vowel sign; other possibilities include rotation of the basic sign, or addition of diacritics . While true syllabaries have one symbol per syllable and no systematic visual similarity, the graphic similarity in most abugidas stems from their origins as abjads—with added symbols comprising markings for different vowel added onto a pre-existing base symbol. The largest single group of abugidas

3256-513: The addition of dedicated vowel letters, as with the derivation of the Greek alphabet from the Phoenician alphabet c.  800 BC . Abjad is the word for "alphabet" in Arabic and Malay: the term derives from the traditional order of the Arabic alphabet 's letters 'alif , bā' , jīm , dāl , though the word may have earlier roots in Phoenician or Ugaritic . An abugida

3330-414: The base character. Examples: [REDACTED] ping, [REDACTED] pong, [REDACTED] peh, and [REDACTED] pih. Vowel diacritics are reordered for closed syllables (that is, syllables where the final consonant has no vowel). Consonants with no vowel are marked by the Batak pangolat or panongonan diacritic, depending on the language. When they are used for a closed syllable (like "tip"), both

3404-583: The consonantal sounds of a language. They were the first alphabets to develop historically, with most that have been developed used to write Semitic languages , and originally deriving from the Proto-Sinaitic script . The morphology of Semitic languages is particularly suited to this approach, as the denotation of vowels is generally redundant. Optional markings for vowels may be used for some abjads, but are generally limited to applications like education. Many pure alphabets were derived from abjads through

3478-537: The context to which the text referred. Over time, the current system of rapid silent reading for information replaced the older, slower, and more dramatic performance-based reading, and word dividers and punctuation became more beneficial to text. Though paleographers disagree about the chronological decline of scriptio continua throughout the world, it is generally accepted that the addition of spaces first appeared in Irish and Anglo-Saxon Bibles and Gospels from

3552-426: The corner of a stone. The ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet was also written from bottom to top. Scriptio continua Scriptio continua ( Latin for 'continuous script'), also known as scriptura continua or scripta continua , is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between the words or sentences. The form also lacks punctuation , diacritics , or distinguished letter case . In

3626-600: The corresponding spoken language . Alphabets use graphemes called letters that generally correspond to spoken phonemes , and are typically classified into three categories. In general, pure alphabets use letters to represent both consonant and vowel sounds, while abjads only have letters representing consonants, and abugidas use characters corresponding to consonant–vowel pairs. Syllabaries use graphemes called syllabograms that represent entire syllables or moras . By contrast, logographic (alternatively morphographic ) writing systems use graphemes that represent

3700-523: The earliest true writing, closely followed by the Egyptian hieroglyphs . It is generally agreed that the two systems were invented independently from one another; both evolved from proto-writing systems between 3400 and 3200 BC, with the earliest coherent texts dated c.  2600 BC . Chinese characters emerged independently in the Yellow River valley c.  1200 BC . There

3774-451: The extinction of scriptio continua as a critical factor in augmenting the widespread absorption of knowledge in the pre-Modern Era. By saving the reader the taxing process of interpreting pauses and breaks, the inclusion of spaces enables the brain to comprehend written text more rapidly. Furthermore, the brain has a greater capacity to profoundly synthesize text and commit a greater portion of information to memory. Scriptio continua

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3848-399: The first being kanji and the latter two being kana systems, the cursive hiragana and the angular katakana . While spaces are not normally used in writing, boundaries between words are often quickly perceived by Japanese speakers since kana are usually visually distinct from kanji. Japanese speakers also know that certain words, morphemes, and parts of speech are typically written using one of

3922-449: The folk-memory', and sagum ungmenni 'let us say to the group of young men'. A form of scriptio continua has become common in internet e-mail addresses and domain names where, because the "space" character is invalid, the address for a website for "Example Fake Website" is written as examplefakewebsite.com – without spaces between the separate words. However, the "underscore" or "dash" characters are often used as stand-ins for

3996-473: The hand is to the right side of the pen. The Greek alphabet and its successors settled on a left-to-right pattern, from the top to the bottom of the page. Other scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew , came to be written right-to-left . Scripts that historically incorporate Chinese characters have traditionally been written vertically in columns arranged from right to left, while a horizontal writing direction in rows from left to right became widely adopted only in

4070-415: The modern kana system, in which Japanese was written entirely in kanji and man'yōgana , the latter of which are written solely to indicate a word's pronunciation as opposed to its meaning. For that reason, different syllabary systems called kana were developed to differentiate phonetic graphemes from ideographic ones. Modern Japanese is typically written using three different types of graphemes,

4144-441: The most common based on what unit of language is represented by each unit of writing. At the highest level, writing systems are either phonographic ( lit.   ' sound writing ' ) when graphemes represent units of sound in a language, or morphographic ( lit.   ' form writing ' ) when graphemes represent units of meaning, such as words or morphemes . The term logographic ( lit.   ' word writing ' )

4218-553: The next page. Before the 1970's, Gurbani and other Sikh scriptures were written in the traditional method of writing the Gurmukhi script known as larivār where there were no spacing between words in the texts (interpuncts in the form of a dot were used by some to differentiate between words, such as by Guru Arjan ). This is opposed to the comparatively more recent method of writing in Gurmukhi known as pad ched , which breaks

4292-546: The pronunciation of a character. They can change the vowel from the inherent /a/ , mark a final [velar nasal] /ŋ/ , mark a final velar fricative /x/ , or indicate a final consonant with no vowel: The diacritic for U used by Mandailing, Pakpak, Simalungun, and Toba can form ligatures with its base character: In Mandailing, the diacritic tompi can be used to change the sound of some characters: The diacritics for Ng ( [REDACTED] ) and H ( [REDACTED] ) are usually written above spacing vowel diacritics instead of above

4366-629: The reader with more freedom to interpret the text. The reader had the liberty to insert pauses and dictate tone, which made the act of reading a significantly more subjective activity than it is today. However, the lack of spacing also led to some ambiguity because a minor discrepancy in word parsing could give the text a different meaning. For example, a phrase written in scriptio continua as collectamexiliopubem may be interpreted as collectam ex Ilio pubem , meaning 'a people gathered from Troy', or collectam exilio pubem , 'a people gathered for exile'. Thus, readers had to be much more cognisant of

4440-438: The release of version 6.0. The Unicode block for Batak is U+1BC0–U+1BFF: Unicode fonts for Batak must handle several requirements to properly render text: Writing system Writing systems are generally classified according to how its symbols, called graphemes , generally relate to units of language. Phonetic writing systems, which include alphabets and syllabaries , use graphemes that correspond to sounds in

4514-483: The script. Braille is a non-linear adaptation of the Latin alphabet that completely abandoned the Latin forms. The letters are composed of raised bumps on the writing substrate , which can be leather, stiff paper, plastic or metal. There are also transient non-linear adaptations of the Latin alphabet, including Morse code , the manual alphabets of various sign languages , and semaphore, in which flags or bars are positioned at prescribed angles. However, if "writing"

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4588-464: The seventh and eighth centuries. Subsequently, an increasing number of European texts adopted conventional spacing, and within the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all European texts were written with word separation. When word separation became the standard system, it was seen as a simplification of Roman culture because it undermined the metric and rhythmic fluency generated through scriptio continua . In contrast, paleographers today identify

4662-477: The spoken language in its entirety. Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing systems consisting of ideograms and early mnemonic symbols. The best-known examples include: Writing has been invented independently multiple times in human history. The first writing systems emerged during the Early Bronze Age , with the cuneiform writing system used to write Sumerian generally considered to be

4736-451: The text, the time available for writing, the intended audience, and the largely unconscious features of an individual's handwriting. Orthography ( lit.   ' correct writing ' ) refers to the rules and conventions for writing shared by a community, including the ordering of and relationship between graphemes. Particularly for alphabets , orthography includes the concept of spelling . For example, English orthography includes

4810-601: The three systems. Kanji is typically used for words of Japanese and Chinese origin as well as content words (e.g. nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs). Hiragana is typically used for native Japanese words, as well as commonly known words, phrases, and grammatical particles , as well as inflections of content words like verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Katakana is typically used for loanwords from languages other than Chinese, onomatopoeia , and emphasized words. Like Chinese, Japanese lacked any sort of punctuation until interaction with Western civilizations became more common. Punctuation

4884-444: The top of a page and end at the bottom, with each row read from left to right. Egyptian hieroglyphs were written either left to right or right to left, with the animal and human glyphs turned to face the beginning of the line. The early alphabet could be written in multiple directions: horizontally from side to side, or vertically. Prior to standardization, alphabetic writing could be either left-to-right (LTR) and right-to-left (RTL). It

4958-501: The units of meaning in a language, such as its words or morphemes . Alphabets typically use fewer than 100 distinct symbols, while syllabaries and logographies may use hundreds or thousands respectively. A writing system also includes any punctuation used to aid readers and encode additional meaning, including that which would be communicated in speech via qualities of rhythm , tone , pitch , accent , inflection , or intonation . According to most contemporary definitions, writing

5032-541: The vowel diacritic and the pangolat or panongonan are written at the end of the syllable. Examples of closed syllables using pangolat : Batak is normally written without spaces or punctuation (as scriptio continua ). However, special marks or bindu are occasionally used. They vary greatly in size and design from manuscript to manuscript. Batak script was added to the Unicode Standard in October 2010 with

5106-579: The water there are fish; in the paddy fields there is rice.") can also be written as "ใน น้ำ มี ปลา ใน นา มี ข้าว". This example shows the first line of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Javanese script , and a case of the text being divided, as in some modern writing, by spaces and dash signs, which look different. Because of the absence of space, in computer typography, the line-break have to be inserted manually, otherwise

5180-403: The words by inserting spacing between them. Before the invention of delimiters and other punctuation to set off groups of three digits in numbers above four digits, large numbers (e.g. numbers greater than 999) were written continuously. As of now, only numbers with fewer than four digits are written with no delimiter or other punctuation. This manner is somewhat similar how to separate a word in

5254-688: Was adopted during the Meiji period . Modern Thai script, which was said to have been created by King Ram Khamhaeng in 1283, does not contain any spaces between words. Spaces indicate only the clear endings of clauses or sentences. Below is a sample sentence of Thai written first without spaces between words (with Thai romanization in parentheses), second in Thai with spaces between words (also with Thai romanization in parentheses), and then finally translated into English. For example, "ในน้ำมีปลา ในนามีข้าว" (pronounced " nai nam mi phla nai na mi khao ", meaning "In

5328-435: Was most commonly written boustrophedonically : starting in one (horizontal) direction, then turning at the end of the line and reversing direction. The right-to-left direction of the Phoenician alphabet initially stabilized after c.  800 BC . Left-to-right writing has an advantage that, since most people are right-handed , the hand does not interfere with text being written—which might not yet have dried—since

5402-409: Was not linear, its Sumerian ancestors were. Non-linear systems are not composed of lines, no matter what instrument is used to write them. Cuneiform was likely the earliest non-linear writing. Its glyphs were formed by pressing the end of a reed stylus into moist clay, not by tracing lines in the clay with the stylus as had been done previously. The result was a radical transformation of the appearance of

5476-511: Was probably derived from Pallava and Old Kawi scripts, which ultimately were derived from the Brahmi script , the root of almost all the Indic and Southeast Asian scripts. Batak is written from left to right and top to bottom. Like all Brahmi-based scripts, each consonant has an inherent vowel of /a/ , unless there is a diacritic (in Toba Batak called pangolat ) to indicate the lack of

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