Ideographic Writing

a writing system in which the characters(ideograms) signify neither sounds nor syllables (as in

Figure 1

phonetic or syllabic writing) but rather whole words or significant parts of words (morphemes). Ideographic writing is one of the most ancient forms of writing; the ancient Egyptian and Sumerian systems were largely ideographic (see Figure 1). Chinese hieroglyphics developed this form of writing to the greatest extent. Systems of ideographic writing have always been distinguished by their extreme complexity; therefore, most nations have replaced ideographic systems with simpler phonetic or syllabic systems.