Writing comes from a form of expression, a code from one to another, a message of some sort…
Writing most likely came from one’s message to one’s self, a reminder to turn this way down the path instead of the other way, leading straight into a briar patch or tar sands with a saber toothed tiger still stuck in the mire. Something that was meant just for yourself and the receiver of your information. Then one friend told another two friends, and they passed it on to other friends and then it grew and grew and grew etc…(and gossip reigned for thousands of years, until someone invented soap operas). Some sort of logic came to be in words rather than expressions and the word just had to be passed on. In those days, no one knew anything about preservation and use of recording materials… We just presume that we were stupid because we had no means of retaining the information as to just what exactly happened in those days and this mentality is still sadly alive to many many nations around the globe.
The same with the languages that are known of today. Language was ever evolving and changing with mispronunciations, misinterpretations, slang and local dialects making every language a fluid sequence of body and word. It was until the powers that are still powerful today, the countries that created written word to preserve the pronunciation and meaning of words in dictionaries that language as we know it today slowed down to the pace of the writer or scribe. The form and expression of the shrug in the language of the body could mean many different things, like “I don’t know” or “I don’t care” or “don’t spik englis” or “who gives a $A%#!”
Making body language understandable comes from infancy, before anyone can speak properly. When you grow older, body language combined with verbal expressions can communicate directly and distinctly. But when it comes to writing, how can you show a shrug, or a defiant laugh when danger lurks, or cry in the dark from a startled mother, or the whine of a spoiled child, all these expressions taken for granted in the physical world. Good writing and proper distinction are skills that few have when it comes to making the written word come to life. Verbal diarrhea is easy when it comes to self gratification during long and boring speeches to a crowd, but stirring up that same crowd with a well written speech takes skill.
After Gutenberg cranked out the first printed Bible in 1455, the world at the same moment, stood still when those words were frozen in time for eternity (at least as long at the paper lasts) and in the same breath, communications to few and then centuries later to many who could read, changed the world.
Come today, the number of readers far outweigh the writers and even the internet created a new language. This language reverts back to the body and verbal language era where phonetic sounds are expressed like “frm me 2 u” “sup” “lol”, etc…
But we know now what happens today at almost every moment of our lives, if we want to know it. This is knowledge extravagance at its utmost, and it’s at our fingertips. Who knows, maybe it will be called finger talk, where your fingers do the talking on a keyboard. I was told that I was an artist with words, that I could express in a word or two insurmountable number of expressions, yet no one reads the words and has the ability to proclaim me as a master, never in a thousand words.
