The word ‘writing’ has different meanings depending on view points. Accordingly, experts defined writing in different ways.

Writing is one of the four basic language skills and in fact, the fourth skill in the language learning order – Listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is, indeed, an active skill like speaking in contrast to passive skills like listening and reading in language acquisition.

Dictionaries enlist a number of senses (meanings) for the word ‘writing’ depending on different view points or context. But, writing is basically a form of communication which is unique for human beings that also distinguished it from all other animals. Writing evolved as alternative to it’s predominant counterpart, oral language, essentially out of recording needs. In fact, the early form of writing used pictographs to record commercial information but subsequently became important for storage and transfer of information.

Writing is the visual or tactile representation of the oral language. However, the tactile representation are focussed for the visually impaired and uses special methods like Braille systems, is beyond the scope of this article. On the other, the visual representation may appear to encompass sign languages for the hearing disables are also not writing at all.

Writing, in most common senses, is the method of recording the language mainly in terms of visible marks or characters, termed graphic symbols. Writing is essentially the encoding of oral languages by graphic symbols for ‘decoding’ by readers through reading.

“By writing, we mean a series of graphic symbols arranged on a surface (be it physical, like a sheet of paper, or virtual, like a screen), in a certain order and in a certain sequence, so that this series is likely to be interpreted (read) by an interpreter (reader) who knows howto decipher the meaning of these signs”.

Alphabetic Vs. Non-Alphabetic Writing: Linguistic Fit and Natural Tendencies
Antonio Baroni – https://www.academia.edu/702320/Alphabetic_Vs._Non-Alphabetic_Writing_Linguistic_Fit_and_Natural_Tendencies

In fact, the written forms of languages use a set of predefined symbols, called script. The symbols in the script of written languages are the smallest unit of written form, named grapheme, that represent either letters or syllables or words or even ideas.

Writing or , more specifically, writing systems are essentially strings of graphic symbols or graphemes and therefore such strings can be regarded as Symbolic expressions or graphical Expressions.

The graphical Expressions can be classified in different ways :

• Alphabetical Graphic Expression and Nonalphabetical Graphic expression (according to the scripts used in conventional writing).
• Directionality (left to Right or Right to left, horizontal or vertical writing)
• Linear or nonlinear
• handwriting, type writing

But, graphic expressions extends beyond the conventional forms of writing and include :

• Mathematical expressions
• Chemical Equations
• shorthand
• Musical Notation
• pictographic writing
• Movement writing

to name a few.