Print culture embodies all forms of printed text and other printed forms of visual communication. One prominent scholar of print culture in Europe is Elizabeth Eisenstein, who contrasted the print culture of Europe in the centuries after the advent of the Western printing-press to European scribal culture. The invention of woodblock printing in China almost a thousand years prior and then the consequent Chinese invention of moveable type in 1040 had very different consequences for the formation of print culture in Asia. The development of printing, like the development of writing itself, had profound effects on human societies and knowledge. "Print culture" refers to the cultural products of the printing transformation.

In terms of image-based communication, a similar transformation came in Europe from the fifteenth century on with the introduction of the old master print and, slightly later, popular prints, both of which were actually much quicker in reaching the mass of the population than printed text.

Print culture is the conglomeration of effects on human society that is created by making printed forms of communication. Print culture encompasses many stages as it has evolved in response to technological advances. Print culture can first be studied from the period of time involving the gradual movement from oration to script as it is the basis for print culture. As the printing became commonplace, script became insufficient and printed documents were mass-produced. The era of physical print has had a lasting effect on human culture, but with the advent of digital text, some scholars believe the printed word may become obsolete.^{[citation needed]}

The electronic media, including the World Wide Web, can be seen as an outgrowth of print culture.

Prior to print, knowledge was transmitted through oral traditions, including formulaic story telling supported by mnemonic techniques, as well as architectural and material artifacts. the invention of writing brought with it the emergence of scribal culture or manuscript culture. Scholars disagree over when scribal culture developed. Walter Ong argues that scribal culture cannot exist until an alphabet is created, and a form of writing standardized. On the other hand, D. F. McKenzie argues that even communicative notches on a stick, or structure, represent “text”, and therefore scribal culture.

Ong suggests scribal culture is defined by an alphabet. McKenzie says that the key to scribal culture is non-verbal communication, which can be accomplished in more ways than using an alphabet. These two views give rise to the importance of print culture. In scribal culture, procuring documents was a difficult task, and documentation would then be limited to the rich only. Ideas are difficult to spread amongst large groups of people over large distances of land, not allowing for effective dissemination of knowledge.

Scribal culture also deals with large levels of inconsistency. In the process of copying documents, many times the meaning became changed, and the words different. Reliance on the written text of the time was never exceedingly strong. Over time, a greater need for reliable, quickly reproduced, and a relatively inexpensive means of distributing written text arose. Scribal culture, transforming into print culture, was only replicated in manners of written text.

Jack Goody, however, documents that the introduction of written language was transformative for finances, religion, law, and governance. Written language facilitated higher levels of organization, coherence and consistency of messages, extending reach of control, ownership and belief, creating rule of law, critical comparison of statements, among other effects. Extensive scribal cultures with corresponding social consequences emerged in the ancient Middle East, the Ancient Hebrew world, Classic Greece and Rome, India, China, Mesoamerica, and the Islamic world. The complexity of cultural change in the ancient Middle East is documented in the Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture.