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The History of Writing
(history of writing)
Writing is commonly used by billions of people each day. However, many of us don?t know the history of writing, and some of us would rather not ponder it for fear of getting a headache. Written communication is much needed today, and many societies could not survive without writing. Writing has a history like everything that is in existence today. The exact history of this form of communication may be clouded and even over exaggerated at times, but there are two known facts, writing has been used for a very long time and writing will be used for a very long time. The true beginning of writing is unknown, but it does have a comprehensive history. The first artistic paintings and writings were said to be done in the form of naturalistic paintings of animals and people in caves. The pictures were known as attempts to appease the spirits of animals that were needed to kill in the hunt.
In ancient times pictures were also done of human beings. These pictures of humans were typically done in series, with a figure appearing in different physical positions progressively, which represented positions a ceremonial dance performed by ancient people. Progressively, the early societies began to stylize their messages, which were similar to using symbols to represent restrooms, handicap-accessible places, and international road signs. These stylized symbols are known a petroglyphs and hieroglyphs. The most famous system of hieroglyphs belonged to the ancient Egyptians who had hieroglyphics that were partially representational pictures that were stylized. Petrogylphs were often used by Native Americans as messages along trade routes, ritual information, and various other things. However, they were not as sophisticated as hieroglyphs. During this ancient period, Europeans preserved esoteric knowledge in runes and in an alphabetic writing system known as ogham.
The Chinese culture also has a place in the history of writing. The culture began by writing like many others by using pictures then slowly moving to stylized pictures. However, over time the pictures became less representational and more abstract. Today, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages are written with the use of ideeographs. An ideeograph is used to represent an idea instead of a word. Around 1700 B.C. a new form of writing appeared in the Middle Eastern cultures. During this time, the Phoenicians created an alphabet. This development was different from all others because the symbols represented sounds, not pictures or ideas. The combinations of sounds made up the words of the language, which was crucial in the history of writing. The alphabet developed by the Phoenicians spread to Northern Africa and became the system of the Arabs, and spread northwest to Greece. The Greek developed their own letters, which were modified even more to become the Cyrillic alphabets of Russia, the Balkans and the Romans. The Romans modified the alphabet and made it the alphabet that is recognized today.
The history of writing developed even further into the 20th century. Following World War II, the Japanese and Chinese began to use the alphabet to represent the sounds of their languages. For these Asian cultures, the alphabetic system was easier to write by hand and to print economically, so it made life far simpler for those cultures. The artistic form of writing used by these Asian cultures will likely never die, but there are many advantages to using an alphabetic system, and many modern people of these cultures benefit handsomely from learning to read and write using the current alphabet. The history of writing is long and sometimes vague, but it can be seen as a necessary teaching that will help modern societies understand the importance of written communication, and understand how the world would be forever changed without it.
Being Effective in Your Persuasive Writing (persuasive writing) The goal of persuasive writing is to have the ability to influence or change a persons mind with your words. You encounter these in your normal everyday life. Whether it is a politician trying to convince you to vote for them, a commercial for a company that wants you to buy there product, or from your children trying to explain the reason why they should be allowed to go to that concert, persuasion is all around. You may even use the power of persuasion on yourself, like deciding why or why not you should eat that last piece of pizza or if you really need to buy another white shirt even though it is a really good deal. Everyday you have to decide on whether one choice is better than another and why. To succeed in your persuasive writing venture you need to follow a few simple rules. You must have focus. Decide on what position you are trying to persuade. Are you for or against the topic your writing about? Choose a side and stick with it. Arguing both sides of the fence will be detrimental to your persuasion. There are three techniques that you will need to use to have convincing persuasive writing. Now you need to provide facts and evidence to support your writing. Statistics and examples are used to provide the reason people should choose you position and believe your writings. You can also include facts and evidence that demonstrate why the opposition is wrong. This should be eased into. Remember you are trying to persuade and convince them on why you position is better not offend or alienate them. This is called the logos technique of persuasion writing. Another persuasive writing technique is ethos. This is where you have to prove yourself to be a creditable person. To be able to make your readers believe that they should have confidence in what you are telling them. The best way to prove your credibility is to provide true and undisputable facts, be articulate, and explain why you are capable of proving this information to them. Pathos is the third technique you will use in your writing. This will appeal to the emotions of the readers. This can be the most important technique but also the most critical. It must be used with caution or you can just as easily turn the readers against you as you could bring them with you. Appealing to your readers emotions can be tricky. This must be done subtly To work this effectively you must have the ability to make the reader feel your emotions, the joy, the pain, the hurt whatever the case maybe. You need to pin point your target audience and write to appeal to them. What sounds interesting and persuasive to a teenager most likely will not work with a middle age woman. Whether you are targeting men or women will make a difference in you writings. Identify with your target audience. An example of this would be ?only the cool kids will be wearing product XYZ? or ?we know as a respectable home owner you will want to?..? By identifying with the intended audience it pulls them into what you are writing and how or why it pertains to them. Persuasive writings can be a challenge. You have to objective and opened minded to other positions of the topic at hand even though sometimes you don?t want too. Remembering you goal is just to persuade them why yours is better. This does not necessarily mean that the opposition is bad or wrong, just that yours is a superior choice. Copyright lawyer Everything You Need to Know about a Copyright Lawyer Everything you may need to know about a copyright lawyer before you get one, there are so many different types of lawyers a little run down never hurt anyone. Copyright lawyers deal with many different subjects such as internet law, intellectual property, patent and trademark and of course your copyright laws. Each lawyer has gone to school for some time in order to get a degree to help you, which means they know more about the law than you do. Some mistakes website owners make is when they buy articles online; many times a buyer just assumes they have full copyright. This isn?t always the case, depending what was agreed on will determine who has ownership. In order to make sure you don?t fall into this trap have a lawyer set up a contract before you hand over any money, this way you know for sure if you have full ownership or if the writer does. There are actually three different categories that you may purchase an article, usage, full and unique. A copyright lawyer will explain exactly what each one means. Usage is basically meaning the buyer gets to use the article one time, but the writer can use it again or resell it. Full rights will give the buyer all rights; they can even place their name on the article saying they wrote it. A copyright lawyer will never tell you that you don?t have to register your copyright; in fact they will encourage you to do it. Sure, they get money to do it for you but you will have documented proof that you own the copyright. If you don?t file it, you can?t sue if someone uses your information. A copyright lawyer is not cheap, that means if you are just looking to pay out a mere $300 you are looking in the wrong field. Sure there are sites that offer to do your bidding for you. Are you sure they are someone you trust? Stick with your gut feeling, pay the money and have someone there to walk you through everything you need. Most copyright lawyers will have special discounts on packages, which means you?ll be getting a lot more than what you originally walked in for. Chances are your lawyer will even advise you of things you didn?t even have knowledge about. A copyright lawyer can help you better understand the laws of the virtual world, as well as the real world. Every day someone new is getting sued over content on the internet, it can be as simple as someone stealing an article, quote, song or a picture. A big issue is using another company?s name in your tags to get the search engines to rank you higher, you will get caught and when you do the fines are pretty steep. Other issues may be with bloggers today, be careful with what you say about your places of business, not only could you get in trouble for any copyrighting issues but slander is another big issue. Another thing you may want to know about a copyright lawyer is that you can use one even if you are actually getting sued. Many people only look for one when they want to copyright something or sue someone, but they normally don?t think about hiring a copyright lawyer when they are being sued. This is definitely the person you want on the job defending you if the time comes, after all they do know their job. That?s everything you need to know about a copyright lawyer before you get one, if you have any other questions call them up and ask them. Lawyers love to give advice, especially if they think you?ll be hiring them. |