Writing is regarded as one of the key intellectual products in people's daily communication. Few efforts, however, have been devoted to systematically studying its change and development. To fill the gap, this edited volume gives readers an insight into how and why writing systems evolve over time. The book bases itself on the understanding that writing should be viewed as a mode of communication, thriving in the social discourse community and spreading across different historical periods.

The book consists of ten academic papers contributed by distinguished scholars, focusing on the study of scripts in different parts of the world and cultural-historical contexts, such as Babylonia, Egypt, Rome, Arabia, India, China, Japan, and Central Mexico from a diachronic angle and also probing into trends and transitions of numerical notations.

In chapter 1, Niek Veldhuis describes the shifts within cuneiform and then examines the social, political, and cultural reasons behind them. In chapter 2, John Baines comprehensively introduces script forms in Middle Kingdom Egypt according to their functions, demarcations, and social implications, and further provides an in-depth portrait of relationships and interactions among scripts, high culture, and administration. Chapter 3, by John Bodel, explores the formation and development of ancient Roman script from such aspects as phonetic features, graphic symbols, word order, and epigraphic forms. Noticeably, ‘paragram’ is coined to characterize semantic and visual features that were often neglected in previous studies. In chapter 4, Beatrice Gruendler conducts a profound study on stability and change in Arabic script. She puts emphasis on vowels, inflectional endings, and vocalization of simple nouns, and also touches on the disengagement between oral transmission and written expression. Chapter 5, by Richard Salomon, illustrates a fundamental distinction between superficially formal changes and deeper systemic changes with examples of Indian and South Asian scripts. In chapter 6, Kyle Steinke looks critically at two theories of script development proposed by William Boltz and Qiu Xigui. He claims that Chinese script was mainly designed for beauty rather than efficiency and that it mattered to both the private calligrapher and the state. In chapter 7, David B. Lurie investigates influences of the Chinese writing system on Japanese script and the persistence of logography in Japanese writing. The following two chapters on Mesoamerica by Stephen D. Houston and John Monaghan take a social and contextual perspective in the analysis. The former argues that the earliest Maya signs cannot be fully mastered due to bottlenecks between later practice and the earliest coalescence of writing; the latter studies the alphabetic and pictorial registers in Mixtec texts in a colonial context. The volume concludes with chapter 10 by Stephen Chrisomalis, elaborating on written numerals with regard to their derivation, transformations, innovations, extinctions, and limitations.

In sum, the authors vividly demonstrate the shape of worldwide scripts with figures and tables by dwelling on key concepts, development trends, comparative analyses, and underlying causes. This volume has undergone a long and productive preparation before coming into being; therefore, it can function as a significant reference for future studies.