The everyday miracle of writing
Give thanks to the people who resolved to make pictures stand for sounds
If you are reading this column, a combination of 26 squiggles on a page or screen is putting the sounds and meaning of this sentence into your head almost without effort on your part, though you have almost certainly never met the writer. If you are listening to this on The Economist’s audio edition, a reader who has also never met the author has turned a copy of those squiggles into intelligible sound waves for you.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “The miracle of writing”
From the July 2nd 2022 edition
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