Blurb:

The inferior place that the study of writing has had in linguistics; reasons why writing should be studied from a linguistic point of view, i.e. in terms of its relation to language, and not just from the historical point of view, i.e. the changes in shape of characters over the centuries; the most compact outline of the spread of writing through the world; the organization of the book and how it differs from other general treatments of writing systems.

Each chapter concludes with a section entitled “Details,” which might elsewhere have borne the discouraging label “Further reading,” in which both references are given and additional information bearing obliquely on the topic of the chapter is included.