The History of Writing

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Many English words contain the Greek root graph, meaning “to write.” It appears specifically in words that have to do with writing, like calligraphy, and also in words related to other forms of representation, such as photography, cinematography and cartography. The word graffiti, meaning something inscribed on a wall, comes from the Italian by way of Greek and Latin. Instances of graffiti appear in many ancient archaeological sites such as Pompeii and on buildings in modern cities.

MONDAY - Autograph, Paragraph, Epigraph (Noun)

“Auto” means “self” and graph means “writing,” so an autograph is a signature made by oneself, a person’s own signature. Generally, we reserve the word autograph to dignify the signature of someone considered important. Most of us sign documents and checks at times but few of us have the stature that makes our signature count as an autograph.

Essays, news articles, and book chapters contain paragraphs. A paragraph is a unit of writing that focuses on a particular idea or theme. Dividing up a long, written text into paragraphs makes the writer’s train of thought easier to follow.

Sometimes a long piece of writing is preceded by an epigraph, which is a short, pithy saying or bit of verse that appears above the main text (the Greek suffix “epi” means “above”) and encapsulates an idea on which the writer intends to expand.

TUESDAY - Biography, Hagiography, Autobiography (Noun)

“Auto” means “self” and “bio” means “life,” so an autobiography is a person’s life story written by him- or herself. When a person’s life story is written by anyone other than the subject, it is simply a biography.

Biographers sometimes present their subjects in a flattering light, but often biographies are celebrated for offering a complex picture of an individual—the “warts and all” approach. A nuanced biography is apt to strike readers as more accurate for its inclusion of the flawed as well as the admirable aspects of a personality.

The word hagiography refers to the biography of a saint (in Greek hagios means holy). Many religious traditions produce stories of holy men and women. But a biography may also be described as hagiographic if it appears to present an excessively idealized portrait of an individual. Depictions that make anyone OTHER than an actual saints appear inhumanly perfect tend to invite skepticism, so if a book reviewer describes a biography of a politician or an entrepreneur as hagiographic, that’s usually a diss.

WEDNESDAY - Grapheme, Calligraphy, Graphology (Noun)

The word grapheme combines graph with the suffix -eme, which means “unit of language.” A grapheme is a unit of writing, such as a letter or character. Calligraphy combines the Greek kallos (beauty) with graph, and refers to beautiful handwriting. A skilled calligrapher can make each grapheme graceful and consistent, creating a piece of text that is elegant and harmonious.

Practitioners of the pseudoscience called graphology (graph + “ology,” meaning “science of”) claim to be able to identify aspects of a person’s personality by analyzing the person’s handwriting. Graphology is not the same thing as forensic handwriting analysis, which is used for purposes such as detecting forgery, a more modest and empirically demonstrable goal. Graphologists make some pretty outlandish claims. Examples include the contention that a person who dots the letter “i” high above the stem is more “visionary” than a person whose dot is closer to the stem because “the top of the page represents dreams.” Um… sure. Graphology has been debunked in various ways. In one experiment, different graphologists analyzed the same handwriting sample and came to wildly various conclusions about the writer.

THURSDAY - Geography, Cartography, Topography (Noun)

The root “geo” means “earth,” so geography means “writing about the earth,” or the science of describing the earth. Geographers can be both natural scientists, who study the physical features of our planet, and also social scientists, who study the ways in which human societies interact with their environments.

Naturally, people who study geography make and also use maps. The art and science of map-making is called cartography. One type of map is the topographical map. The word topography (from the Greek topos, meaning “place”) refers both to the surface features of the earth and also to the study and depiction of those features.

FRIDAY - Photography, Choreography, Cinematography (Noun)

In a figurative sense, people can “write” using media other than words. The Greek word photo means “light” and a photograph could be described as a document “written” with light.

The Greek word kinein means “to move.” In the 1890s, the French Lumiere brothers developed a technology to project moving pictures onto a screen—the beginning of modern cinema. Cinematography is the art of making films, which, like still photographs, are “written” using light. The cinematographer is responsible for designing and crafting the final look of a film, which is often as distinctive and important as the script itself in telling a story.

The Greek word khoros refers to the performers who sang and danced as the Chorus that was a feature of ancient Greek tragedies such as Sophocles’ Oedipus plays. (Notice that the letter “k” often changes to “c” in the English words based on Greek origins). A choreographer, in effect, “writes” using movement. The word choreography can refer both to the sequence of steps dancers perform and also to the written notation of that sequence.  Brilliant choreographers include the Russian-born George Balanchine, who came to the United States in 1933 and revolutionized modern ballet, and the American Alvin Ailey, whose work gave new prominence to the contributions of African Americans in the world of dance.