An introduction to reading the world's scripts; Taylor, D.R. Olson. Part I Optional and Optimal Scripts: Scripts and writing systems - a historical perspective, A. Gaur; Optimal orthographies, H. Rogers; Logographic and semasiographic writing systems - a critique of Sampson's classification, J.M. Unger, J. DeFrancis; syllabary and the writing system riddle - a paradigm in crisis, S. McCarthy; Developing orthographies - the Athapaskan languages of the Northwest Territories, Canada, K.D. Rice; Orthography and reading in Kannada - a Dravidian language, P. Prakash, R. Malatesha Joshi. Part II Reading Processes for Different Scripts: How English is read - grapheme-phoneme regularity and orthographic structure in word recognition, R.L. Venezky; Getting at the sound and meaning of logographic and alphabetic scripts, R. Hoosain; Script factors that affect literacy - alphabetic vs. logographic languages, In-Mao Liu; Orthographic and psycholinguistic considerations in developing literacy in Chinese, Che Kan Leong; Differential processing of content words and function words - Chinese characters vs. phonetic scripts, I. Taylor, Kwonsaeng Park. Part III Early Stage of Learning to Read: Teaching Japanese toddlers to read Kanji and Kana, M.T. Steinberg; Asymmetries between reading and writing for Japanese children, J. Yamada; Reading disabilities in Japan - implications from the study of hemisphere functioning, T. Hatta, T. Hirose; Writing systems and acquisition of reading in American, Chinese, and Japanese first-graders, Shin-Ying Lee, D.H. Uttal, Chuansheng Chen; Brahmi scripts, orthographic units and reading acquisition, P.G. Patel; Orthographic and cognitive processing in learning to read English and Hebrew, E. Geva. Part IV Cognitive and Metalinguistic Implications of Learning to Read: Script directionality affects nonlinguistic performance - evidence from Hindi and Urdu, J. Vaid; Cognitive consequences of L1 and L2 orthographies, K. Koda; Lexical representation of script variation - evidence from Korean biscriptals, Kwonsaeng Park, J. Vaid; Syllabic literacy and cognitive performance among the Cree and Ojibwe people of Northern Canada, J.W. Berry, J.A. Bennett; Orthography, vision, and phonemic awareness, R.J. Scholes