10/20/2026
NATIONAL DAY ON WRITING®
Each year on October 20th, we celebrate National Day on Writing® to encourage people to engage in daily writing and acknowledge the various roles writing plays in our lives. This creative day aims to change public understanding of writing by showcasing its various forms—creative, informative, academic, informal, or digital.
We all have experience writing, even if you don't think you're "good" at it. We use it to express our thoughts, our ideas, and to record information into a readable format. Whether you are a professional writer, someone who types all day behind a keyboard, or someone expressing yourself through poetry, writing is a way to record language across time and space. National Day on Writing® gives people around the world an opportunity to sit down and write.
Writing Through the Ages
Long before we had letters on keyboards, people used symbols to tell stories of their daily lives, as found in cave paintings dated around 35,000 BCE. During the Neolithic period, around 7,000 BCE, people in the Middle East used small clay tokens in different shapes to count and keep records of goods, like jars of oil or bushels of grain. Though this isn't considered writing, it was the first step, laying the foundation for writing by using a physical object to represent a specific quantity or idea.
Cuneiform, which means "wedge-shaped," was invented around 3400-3200 BCE by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Starting as simple pictographs drawn on wet clay tablets to keep track of inventory and trade, Cuneiform evolved from marks made with a reed stylus into a complex system representing sounds and syllables.
Hieroglyphs, meaning "sacred carvings," are famously known as a type of writing used by ancient Egyptians beginning around 3200 BCE. This type of pictorial writing consists of logograms and phonograms that represent actual words and sounds. Though considered a complex form of writing, hieroglyphs can be deciphered by following the direction of the human and animal figures.
The alphabet originated around 1800 BCE with Semitic-speaking people in the Sinai Peninsula. An adaptation of hieroglyphs, the alphabet was created to represent the sounds of their own language. Around 1050 BCE, the Phoenicians refined that idea by creating a simple 22-character system. Each symbol stood for one basic consonant sound, making it easy to learn, teach, and adapt. By 800 BCE, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowel symbols. Eventually, the Roman Empire spread the Greek alphabet across Europe, etching the evolution of writing in stone!
6 WAYS TO CELEBRATE NATIONAL DAY ON WRITING®
Celebrating today is all about one thing: writing! Here are a few simple and engaging ways to participate:
Challenge yourself to tell a complete story in only six words.
Step away from the keyboard and write a handwritten letter or postcard to a friend or family member.
Send a quick email or social media message to an author, journalist, or blogger whose work you admire and thank them for inspiring you to become a better writer.
Don't be intimidated by a blank page. set a timer for five minutes and write whatever comes to mind—your to-do list, a memory, or your goals for the day.
If you're a list-maker, try writing a poem. Haiku poetry is very similar to making a list, so this may be a great place to start!
Share what writing means to you, post a picture of your journal, a favorite quote, or a few sentences about your passion on social media using the hashtag .
