ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nature of writing as a process of communication and analyse its constituent elements in order to increase the reader's awareness of what appears to happen when a child attempts to create a written text. Writing is normally a continuing and sustained act of communication. In most face-to-face encounters children collect and communicate their thoughts unselfconsciously. Writing and talking may be thought of as parallel language modes with essential features in common. The differences between speech and writing are often fundamental and complex. In most written texts there is no place for 'fillers' and only very limited opportunities exist to communicate the subtleties of intonation, facial expression and gesture. In talking, the meanings which a speaker wishes to communicate are encoded and transmitted as 'noises in the air' - the symbol system of oral language - to be perceived and reinterpreted by a listener.
