In the past decade we have seen newspapers disappear, online browser limit local sources and artificial intelligence decide what news is important to you. But the art of writing and composition is making a comeback. Readers are finding deeper searches are articles which pertain to their true interest.

Today we celebrate National Writing Day and cheer for those who compose the prose.

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.

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.

Today we use laptops, mobile devices and PCs to take down our thoughts. Some use "AI" to check their work but most still research the facts. It is hard to predict where the written word will be in a few months, much less, a few years. Though local journalist will find a way to provide varied opinions and facts for every article.