It was Safaitic, an alphabet that flourished in northern Arabia two millennia ago, and Al-Jallad and Macdonald are among a very small number of people who can read it.

I wanted to try something very different. So, I use another writing system to write my original thoughts. I use the Wakandan writing system to write my thoughts because I already know how to write in it and I virtually know almost no one else who knows how to.

In fact the idea of creating a phonetic alphabet that could be used by every language was first put forward by Jespersen in a letter he sent to Paul Passy.[4]

The first important modification of the method of the Romans was that invented by the German poet Konrad Celtes, who, in his Epitoma in utramque Ciceronis rhetoricam cum arte memorativa nova (1492), instead of places made use of the letters of the alphabet.

he also innovated in typography, being responsible for an influential font that omitted the long s.

"The earlier systems of writing were extremely difficult to learn," says Schwartz, the Whiting Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. "There were thousands of symbols used in very complicated ways, which meant that only a very small group of people could ever learn how to write or read. With the invention of the alphabet, it meant that a much larger number of people could, in theory, learn how to read and write. And so it ultimately led to the democratization of writing. And of course it is the system that all Western European writing systems used because Greeks, who borrowed the Semitic alphabetic system, then used it to write their own language."

"The main lesson is that even though they were all good at recognizing letters, the writing training was the best at every other measure. And they required less time to get there," lead author Professor Robert Wiley, from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, said in a statement. "With writing, you're getting a stronger representation in your mind that lets you scaffold toward these other types of tasks that don't in any way involve handwriting." Every participant in the study was an adult but the scientists are confident that the same for children. The key, they argue, is that handwriting reinforces what is being learned about the letter, such as the sound, beyond their shape. "The question out there for parents and educators is why should our kids spend any time doing handwriting," explained senior author professor Brenda Rapp, from Johns Hopkins University. "Obviously, you're going to be a better hand-writer if you practice it. But since people are handwriting less then maybe who cares? The real question is: Are there other benefits to handwriting that have to do with reading and spelling and understanding? We find there most definitely are."