Prior to Gutenberg
Ancient Writing
Writing started out as a way to keep account of traded and purchased items using symbols in the marketplace. This form of writing can be dated back to ancient Mesopotamia around 9000 BCE, but there were no written historical records dated until 3000 BCE in Sumeria. These records are shown through a form of writing called pictograms. This was a picture type writing which represented the object or the sound of a letter. Commonly known pictograms consist of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese letters. Advances were made and pictograms started being written on materials other than clay, such as papyrus, stone, bone, metal, and leather. Papyrus became the preferred writing surface for some time and could be glued together in order to create a scroll. Any form of writing was written by a scribe.
By the 2nd and 3rd century, Romans developed an early form of a book known as a Codex. This had many benefits over reading off a scroll, but still had flaws due to the use of papyrus. With common use and age, it started to disintegrate and was destroyed where humid weather existed. With the coming of the 4th century, parchment became the preferred writing surface. Parchment is cow, sheep, or goat skin and is the material that The Deceleration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, and The Articles of Confederation were written on.
How Citizens Started Learning Literature
Writing was a special art form reserved for a select few. Because of this, many citizens were not able to read or write. Papyrus was an expensive writing material, making non affordable for the students in school. Because papyrus was so expensive, the Romans came up with an idea to create a wooden box and fill it with wax. Notes could be scratched into the wax and be easily erased. It was called the wax tablet and it changed education forever.
Early Books
Before the movable type printing press was invented, books were written by hand with no spaces in between words. After the scribe was finished copying the text, it was passed on to be illuminated. This was the process where decorations and pictures would be painted around the text with a variety of colors, gold gilded, and decorative letters. The elegance of these illuminations depended on the income of the customer. For example, a handwritten Bible created for the use of a church would be beautifully decorated. However, a Bible for one's personal use would be less elegant. To prepare the text for the illuminator, the scribe would have to measure out the room needed for the illistaration. This was done by using a compass, pricking marks down the side of a page, and then ruling out the margins of the page.
A group of monks from the Catholic Monastery were chosen to be used as scribes to copy manuscripts. These monks were placed in rooms called scriptoria and were not allowed to communicate with one another. Correcting any grammar or spelling mistakes was forbidden, they were to simply make an exact replica of the manuscript that was placed in front of them.