A stylus (plural: styli or styluses) is a writing utensil. The word is also used for a computer accessory (PDAs). It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styluses are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely-used writing tool is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille.
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A stylus (plural: styli or styluses) is a writing utensil. The word is also used for a computer accessory (PDAs). It usually refers to a narrow elongated staff, similar to a modern ballpoint pen. Many styluses are heavily curved to be held more easily. Another widely-used writing tool is the stylus used by blind users in conjunction with the slate for punching out the dots in Braille.
Styli were first used by the ancient Mesopotamians in order to write in cuneiform, Egyptians (Middle Kingdom), and the Minoans of Crete (Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphic) made in various materials: reeds that grew on the sides of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and in marshes and down to Egypt where the Egyptians used styluses from sliced reeds with sharp points; bone and metal styli were also used. Cuneiform was entirely based on the "wedge-shaped" mark that the end of a cut reed made when pushed into a clay tablet, hence the name "cuneiform" from Latin cuneus = "wedge". The linear writings of Crete in the first half of the second millennium BC were made on sun dried clay tablets that were left to dry in order to become 'leather' hard before they were incised by the stylus. The linear nature of the writing was also dictated by the use of the stylus.
Function
Styli were used from classical times until the nineteenth century to write on wax tablets (tabulae), which were used for various purposes, from secretaries' notes to recording accounts. Some wax-tablets have been preserved in waterlogged deposits, for example in the Roman fort at Vindolanda on Hadrian's Wall. One end of such styli was pointed for writing and the other was flattened into a broad shape for erasing.
Etymology
The word stylus along with the word "style" came from the Latin word stilus meaning: "a stake; a pointed instrument, used by the Romans, for writing upon wax tablets", which derives from the Greek word στύλος meaning "column" or "pillar". According to the 1875 London Dictionary of Greek & Roman Antiquities a Stilus is "an object tapering like an architectural column; a metal instrument resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing or recording impressions upon waxed tablets. It signifies:
"An iron instrument (Ov. Met. IX.521; Martial, XIV.21), resembling a pencil in size and shape, used for writing upon waxed tablets (Plaut. Bacch. IV.4.63; Plin. H.N. XXXIV.14). At one end it was sharpened to a point for scratching the characters upon the wax (Quintil. i.1 §27), while the other end being flat and circular served to render the surface of the tablets smooth again, and so to obliterate what had been written. Thus, vertere stilum means to erase, and hence to correct, as in the well-known precept saepe stilum vertas (Hor. Sat. 1.10.72; Cic. Verr. II.41)."
