Week 3 Powell 1-99

     This week we learned about the basic terminology concerning types of writing.  I had no idea there were so many different types.  I always just categorized writing into the basic sections of text, pictures, and some combination of the two.  The chapters in the Powell book we read opened up a whole new world of writing for me.  Now whenever I go anywhere I look at signs and things and think hm is that a semasiograph or maybe a logograph?  In a sense this new terminology has “ruined” me.  I analyze everything…it used to just be books and movies, but now it’s signs and pictures too. So much for ignorant bliss.  I also thought it was interesting that musical notes, math notations, and computer symbols are considered their own kind of language.  I never really thought of them that way before.  I hate math so I always tried to ignore all the symbols it uses outside of how will these help me solve this problem?

     In the first three chapters of Powell he also discusses some misconceptions and problems with writing technologies.  He scolded his readers for automatically assuming that writing comes from pictures…which is what I was always taught…sorry Powell… I liked what he said about writing only doing as much as it needs to.  When I would look at hieroglyphs and pictograms…etc. I always thought wow this is doing so much! It’s creating this beautiful art while telling a story and giving us a key to unlock the history of an ancient civilization.  But I guess he’s right.  In context writing is kind of lazy.  A group of people need a way to communicate the word man so they draw a picture of a man…that kind of thing. 

   It is interesting that writing was originally used for everyday mundane things like business transactions.  I don’t know why we think it served some grander purpose, but I guess if you see a pretty picture that represents 4 instead of just a number you assume it stood for something more elaborate.

    I also didn’t know anything about phonetic compliments.  I never knew what the little nd at the end of 2^nd was called I just knew it went there.  And I didn’t know that abbreviations like St. for street had a name either.