World's most popular writing scripts at a glance - style, characters and more

Written language is one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind as the limitations of verbal communication becomes obvious when death comes for all of us. There's also a limit to the quantity of knowledge that a person can hold, compute and comprehend in mind. 

In short, the art of writing has provided us with permanence and holds an influence on almost everything ranging from religion to government. 

Through this article, let us have a look at the world's most popular writing scripts, their styles, characters and more. 

Source: World Atlas

1- Latin 

Latin Script

It is the most widely used script in the world for written communication, with around 4.9 billion people of the world’s population employing it.

It consists of 26 letters which are used to write a range of languages.  Some languages also include characters with accent marks or the same letter representing different sounds. 

Originated in present-day Italy, Latin is the basis for the International Phonetic Alphabet and is used to express phonetics of all languages. 

The major languages of the Latin family include Germanic, Romance, Polish, Austronesian, and Turkish. 

2- Chinese

Chinese Script

Also known as Hanzi, Kanji or Hanja, Chinese is the second most widely used writing script in the world. Chinese characters are called logograms by linguists and range in the thousands. 

The language dates back to the Shang Dynasty of 1200 BC and is used by an estimated 1.34 billion people around the world for written communication. 

The major languages of one of the oldest continuously used forms of writing in the world are Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. 

3- Arabic 

Arabic Script

Arabic dates to about 400 CE and is the third most widely used script for written communication. Read from right to left, Arabic is used by around 660 million people to communicate in several languages including Urdu, Pashto, Arabic, and Persian.

The first large scale use of the language was to write Quran and the script spread with the spread of Islam spread around the world.

4- Devanagari

Devanagari Script

First developed around the 1st century AD, Devanagari is employed by more than 600 million people worldwide for written communication. 

It consists of 47 principal characters-- 33 consonants and 14 vowels and is used in nearly 120 languages, including Hindi, Nepali, and Sanskrit. 
 

5- Bengali 

Bengali Script

Derived from the Brahmi alphabet and closely related to Devanagari, Bengali is employed by an estimated 300 million people for written communication.

The present form of the Bengali alphabet first appeared in 1778 and was slightly modernized in the 19th century.

These were some of the most popular scripts used by people for written communication around the world and may appear foreign at first glance, but are shared across many languages.  

Also Read: List of Ancient Indian Scripts