The development of writing (1) ___________ a huge difference to the world and we might see it as the beginning of the (2) ___________ . Pieces of pottery with marks on that are probably numbers have been (3) ___________ in China that date from around4000 BC. Hieroglyphics and other forms of 'picture writing' developed in the (4) ___________ around Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq),where the (5) ___________ Sumerian civilization was based, from around 3300 BC onwards. However, the first (6) ___________ alphabet was used by the Phoenicians around 1 050 BC. Their alphabet had 22 letters and it is (7) ___________ that it lasted for 1 000 years. The first two signs were called 'aleph' and 'beth: which in Greek became 'alpha' and 'beta: which gave us the (8) ___________ word 'alphabet.

The modern European alphabet is based on the Greek and (9) ___________ to other European countries under the Romans.A number of changes took (10) ___________ as time (11) ___________ .The Romans added the letter G, and the letters J andV were (12) ___________ to people in Shakespeare's time.

If we (13) ___________ the history of punctuation, we also find some interesting facts.The Romans used to write quaesto at the end of a sentence in (14) ___________ to show that it was a question.They started to write Qo in (15) ___________ of the whole word, and then put the Q above the o. In the end, that became the question mark'?'.