Download or read book The Shape of Script written by Stephen D. Houston and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book builds on earlier projects about the origins and extinctions of script traditions throughout the world in an effort to address the fundamental questions of how and why writing systems change. The contributors--who study ancient scripts from Arabic to Roman, from Bronze Age China to Middle Kingdom Egypt--utilize an approach that views writing less as a technology than as a mode of communication, one that is socially learned and culturally transmitted.