Amazing Chinese Characters (54) Write - 書

The shell bone scipt of character Write is

the top part

is a hand holding a brush, the bottom is a flat writing material. It shows that a person is writing with a brush. Another explanation is that the bottom is character 口 - Mouth, which means that a person uses brush to write down someone's speech. However, Dictionary of Pictography explains that a person is drawing the sun to record how many days passed. The 口 is circle of sun, which is not very like.

Its bronze script is

The top is hand and brush. The bottom is character 日 -  Sun. Well, now it is like the sun.

Its small seal script is

more complicated, but we can see the fingers on top, the vertical straight line is the brush attached with some short hairs, the bottom is the sun.

Its clerical script is

similar to the small seal script, a little bit simpler. We can see five fingers - the five horizontal lines, the brush - the vertical line is hand, and sun in the bottom.

Its current standard printing script for traditional character is

書

same as the clerical script.

Its current standard printing script for simplified character is

书

changed dramatically, not pictography any more. This is another example that the simplified character destroyed the pictography.

I need to point out that the 书 is used more often for its another meaning "Book". The original "Write" meaning is used less popular. But the character was created as "Write", not "Book". Book is the product of writing, so people used the same character to mean "Book".

Its Pinyin is "Shu1".