What's the difference between Escribir and Redactar?

Question

What's the difference between escribir and redactar? They both mean "to write".

Answer 1

They are not exactly the same. You can replace "redactar" by "escribir" but not the other way around, you can't replace "escribir" by "redactar" in all cases.

According to the D.R.A.E

escribir

1. tr. Representar las palabras o las ideas con letras u otros signos trazados en papel u otra superficie.
   [English: Represent words or ideas with letters or other signs tracing them over paper or other surface]

redactar

1. tr. Poner por escrito algo sucedido, acordado o pensado con anterioridad.
   [English: Write down something that has happened, has been accorded or has been thought previously]

Let me offer you an example. In Spanish we have the word redacción, the object resulting of redactar, whose equivalent in English is composition.

D.R.A.E
redacción

1. f. Acción y efecto de redactar.
2. f. Especialmente en la escuela, escrito redactado como ejercicio.

Cambridge Dictionary
composition

a short piece of writing about a particular subject, done by a student

You can write/escribir random words in a piece of paper but if they don't form meaningful phrases, that piece of writing is not a composition/redacción