You are talking about cuneiform. According to Ancient Scripts, the word cuneiform derives from the Latin word "cuneus", which means "wedge". The site in the related link provides brief information on cuneiform, like the location, time period, type of writing system and so forth. The site also provides links to entries on related writing systems. Omniglot (also listed in related links) is another helpful site concerned with writing systems. They feature an A-Z listing of writing systems. Each entry has information on the writing system as well as examples of the script and links to other outside sources.

Through a lack of education and poor understanding of linguistics

phonology (the sounds themselves) phonetics (a system of symbols for writing individual speech sounds) Linguistics is the scientific study of natural languages.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language, examining its structure, meaning, and use in communication.

She developed an academic word list (AWL) for study within Corpus-Linguistics. See English for Academic Purposes.