A History of Writing: From Cuneiform to Emoji. Vitaly Konstantinov

Author: Vitaly Konstantinov
Artist: Vitaly Konstantinov
Translator: Anastasia Konstantinova
Publisher: A Walk Through History
Series: Comics
Genre: Children's Comics
ISBN: 978-5-906994-68-4 
Pages: 80 (Offset)
Design
Weight: 635 g
Dimensions: 338x252x12 mm

This comic book tells the story of more than a hundred writing systems: from ancient times to the present day, beginning with cuneiform, ancient Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphs and the first alphabets, and ending with modern emojis and the signs of fictional languages such as Klingon. It is amazing how many different ways there are to record spoken language, and what extraordinary stories are associated with many writing systems! It is incredibly fascinating to look at all kinds of symbols—they are beautiful in themselves, even if you do not know their meanings.
The story of the vast diversity of signs and writing systems unfolds across time and space. The book provides a general overview of the subject and, naturally, cannot contain every writing system, since, according to scholars, humanity has created 292 such systems throughout its history, and not all of them have been deciphered. Yet today, more than half of all writing systems that have ever existed are available on every computer. Encoding capabilities are expanding, and more and more fonts can be displayed and used on computers and smartphones without any problems. We live in an era of the final victory over illiteracy—an era when a unique writing system can be created for every language on our planet and be accessible in every corner of the world with a click of a mouse.
Vitaly Konstantinov was born in 1963 in Izmail (USSR) and lives in Germany. He illustrates and writes books—fiction and non-fiction for children and adults. His books have been published in 36 countries and have received numerous professional awards.
For middle and high school students.
2nd edition.