Here are the 5 main types of writing systems!
An alphabet: uses a set of letters that equally represent vowels and consonants.
An abjad: is a type of alphabet that focuses on the consonants. Vowels are often inferred, indicated with a few specific letters, or represented with small markings. The scripts used for Hebrew and Arabic are abjads.
In syllabaries like the Japanese hiragana, each symbol represents a syllable, with distinct and often dissimilar glyphs being used for each possible syllable in the language.
An abugida: is used in scripts like Devanagari. They are similar to syllabaries, in that each character represents a syllable, but, in most of such writing systems, a consonant with a default vowel makes up a basic character. Markings added on to that character indicate different vowels, meaning symbols based on the same consonant have a similar appearance, unlike in a syllabary.
Logographic systems like Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Mandarin characters use glyphs to primarily represent words or ideas, but they often encode pronunciation as well through certain rebus techniques.
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