Characters in Shang Dynasty were classified according to carriers.

Now we usually write on paper, so what was the carrier of words before there was paper in ancient times? Let me talk to you about the classification of Shang Dynasty characters by carriers.

From the carrier point of view, there are mainly Wen Tao, Jade, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, among which Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the most.

The written materials of Shang Dynasty mainly include Wen Tao, jade, Oracle Bone Inscriptions and inscriptions on bronze, with Oracle Bone Inscriptions in the late Shang Dynasty as the most. The characters left on various materials belong to the same system as Oracle Bone Inscriptions, so the characters of Shang Dynasty can be represented by Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a script in the history of Chinese characters, a divination script in the late Shang Dynasty, and a script actually used at that time. At first, some people called it Tortoise Edition, Tortoise Shell Inscription, Tortoise Shell Bone Inscription and Tortoise Shell Animal Bone Inscription. Later, some people called it Zhen Oracle Inscription, Oracle Bone Inscriptions, Yin Deficiency Syndrome Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and others called it Yin Ruins Calligraphy and Yin Deficiency Syndrome Characters.

In Shang Dynasty, there were many word-formation methods in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, such as pictographic characters, knowing characters, pictophonetic characters, metonymic characters, reference characters and so on. And it is already a mature writing. Among the unearthed Oracle Bone Inscriptions, 4,672 words have been found, among which 1072 words are known to scholars. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's writing materials are hard, so the font is square. At the same time, bronze inscriptions, because they are cast, have a round font.

In Oracle Bone Inscriptions, except a few Chinese characters are written with a brush and then engraved with a knife, they are generally directly engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones with a special bronze knife. Because these materials are hard and often carved into straight lines, most of the glyphs have become square or rectangular. This unique national culture and art has been preserved to this day. There is a word "book" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions, which looks like a collection of bamboo slips. Since there were pens and simplified books in Shang Dynasty, we can know that there were documents written by simplified books at that time. Now, among the Shangshu collected by ancient Wen Hao, five are said to be relics of Shang Dynasty, among which three are believed to have been written by businessmen: Pan Geng. Zhou people said, "Only the ancestors of Yin Dynasty had books" ("Shangshu? More rustic "), it should be credible.