difference between 3 examples

[Nousher Ahmed]

I am trying to explain my problems by the following sentence:

"A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history, i.e, the period before written records and history in tge narrow sense, meaning the study of the past using written evidence."

What is the difference between "the period before written records and history"

and

"the period before records written and history" and "the period before records and history written in the narrow sense"?

[Baburra]

The first one seems to be the only correct format or at least the only one that I find understandable.

"Records written" doesn't sound at all familiar to me so I doubt it is used much if at all, and I don't understand the part about the narrow sense. Perhaps you could provide more information for context?

[Kektheman]

The difference between the first example and the other two is in the part of speech. In the first example your provided, "written records", the word "written" is an adjective, pre-modifying the noun "records". In the other two, the word "written" functions as a verb, the past participle of write.

The first example is the only correct one, in my opinion, since you probably wanted to talk about the historical period before humanity learned to write, so before written records.

[takibari]

Hmmm, I'm not sure that I understand the question. But off the top of my head, the given sentence is a run-on. Thus, it appears confusing.

It's better to break down the sentence to make its meaning clearer.

=====================================================

A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history and history.

(This is the most basic sentence).

So what does pre-history mean?

Pre-history is the period before written records EXIST.

What about the meaning of "history" in its narrow sense?

(=the simplest or the general meaning of the word "history")

History, referring to its narrow sense, means the study of the past.

(written evidence is not necessary in the sentence as you are talking about the "general' meaning of "history". (History can be relayed thru 'oral tradition' or 'written  record/evidence.

=====================================================

So, if you want to put the individual meanings of pre-history and history in one sentence, then it should be written this way:

A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history, which refers to the period before written records exist, AND history, referring to its narrow sense, means the study of the past.

The sentence in blue is the basic/simplest sentence. The ones in green are just additional details to explain or differentiate the words "pre-history" and "history"

I hope this helps clear things up.