In this collection the deeper cognitive aspects of writing systems are added to the perceptual and physiological dimensions and brought into a coherent whole. The result is a multi-faceted understanding of alphabets and other scripts in which none of the major factors that shape those systems, and thus distinctively reveal attributes of the human mind, are slighted. The systems through which language is realized on the page are compared in nature and complexity with those through which language is realized as sound, and are seen in their true perspective. Long the object of intensive inquiry, the process of change in phonological systems is now joined to the evolution of graphological systems, and light is cast on the nature of the relevant human cognitive processes in their diversity and underlying unity. The authors are drawn from Europe, Asia, and North and South America.