lÉcriture

L'écriture, meaning the writing, is a term used to describe several related concepts in linguistics, history, and religion. In general, it denotes the act of writing—transcribing language on a medium—as well as the fixed system of signs used to represent a language. It can also refer to the written texts themselves or to the field of study concerned with writing systems, orthography, and manuscripts.

As a human technology, writing arose independently in various regions and evolved from proto-writing into full writing systems. Early examples include cuneiform in Mesopotamia and hieroglyphs in Egypt; alphabetic systems emerged with the Phoenician script around the second millennium BCE, from which Greek and Latin alphabets developed. Writing enabled the preservation and transmission of information across generations and geographies. In modern times, writing is mediated by technologies from ink and pen to typewriters, printers, and digital keyboards.

In religious contexts, les Écritures or l'Écriture sainte refers to sacred scriptures, notably the Bible, in Christian usage; in Judaism, the Tanakh is also treated as scripture. The term thus signals authority attributed to sacred texts within communities.

L'écriture also denotes orthography—the conventional spelling and punctuation of a language—and, more recently, debates about gender-neutral or inclusive writing in French, sometimes described as écriture inclusive. In linguistic studies, écriture is contrasted with the spoken form and with phonemic transcription, focusing on how signs map to language.