Writing is the cultural artefact and is incorporated as part of education. The Chinese language is very different from most of the world's phonetic language systems with respect to the features of written words and empirical phenomena within the lifeworld. Western intellectual history is founded on the logos, which is transmitted and communicated primarily through voice, in terms of phonetic expression. The written word as the human artefact varies across cultures and incorporates large parts of cultural particularities from each civilisation, from the invention and formation of the word, to the institutionalisation and the code of writing, to the style and formality of writing. The term 'word' in ordinary linguistic usage – both in Chinese and in English – is a single unit of language that has meaning and can be used to refer to either a spoken or a written word.