Letter (alphabet)

and practice letters often denote more than one phoneme.

A pair of letters designating a single phoneme is called a
digraph. Examples of digraphs in English include ch,
sh and th. A phoneme can also be represented by
three letters, called a trigraph. An example is the combination sch in German.
A letter may also be associated with more than one
phoneme, with the phoneme depending on the surrounding letters or etymology of the word. As an example of
positional eects, the Spanish letter c is pronounced [k]
before a, o, or u (e.g. cantar, corto, cuidado), but is pronounced [] before e or i (e.g. centimo, ciudad).
Letters also have specic names associated with them.
These names may dier with language, dialect and history. Z, for example, is usually called zed in all Englishspeaking countries except the U.S., where it is named zee.

Ancient Greek letters on a vase

Letters, as elements of alphabets, have prescribed orders. This may generally be known as alphabetical order though collation is the science devoted to the complex task of ordering and sorting of letters and words in
dierent languages. In Spanish, for instance, is a separate letter being sorted after n. In English, n and are
sorted alike.

A letter is a grapheme (written character) in an alphabetic

system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters also appear in abjads and abugidas
(variants of alphabets in which vowel marking is secondary or absent). Letters broadly denote phonemes in
the spoken form of the language, although there is rarely
a consistent exact correspondence between letters and Letters may also have numerical value. This is true of
phonemes.
Roman numerals and the letters of other writing systems.
Written signs in other writing systems are best called In English, Arabic numerals are typically used instead of
syllabograms (which denote a syllable) or logograms letters.
(which denote a word or phrase).
Letters may be used as words. The words a (lower or

uppercase) and I (always uppercase) are the most common English letter-words. Sometimes O is used for Oh
in
poetic situations. In extremely informal cases of writ1 Denition and usage
ing (such as SMS language) individual letters may replace
words, e.g. u may be used instead of you in English,
Further information: Grapheme, Glyph, and Character when the letter name is pronounced as a homophone of
(symbol)
the word.
People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for
Letter, borrowed from Old French lettre, entered one of these reasons:
Middle English around AD 1200, eventually displacing
the native English term bocstaf (i.e. booksta). Letter
1. The letter is an abbreviation, e.g. G-man as slang
derives from Latin littera, which may have derived, via
for a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, arose as
Etruscan, from the Greek "" (writing tablet).[1]
short for Government Man.
The Middle English plural lettres could refer to an epistle
2. Alphabetical order used as a counting system, e.g.
or written document, reecting the use of the Latin pluPlan A, Plan B, etc.; alpha ray, beta ray, gamma ray,
ral litter. Use of the singular letter to refer to a written
delta ray, epsilon ray
document emerged in the 14th century.
As symbols that denote segmental speech, letters are associated with phonetics. In a purely phonemic alphabet, a
single phoneme is denoted by a single letter, but in history

3. The shape of the letter, e.g. D-ring, F-clamp, Gclamp, H-block, H engine, O-ring, R-clip, U engine,
V engine, Z-drive, a river delta
1

3 TYPES OF LETTERS
4. Other reasons, e.g. X-ray after "x the unknown in
algebra, because the discoverer did not know what
they were.

1.1

A classical denition

Two pages from the manuscript of the Leys d'Amors, 14th century

The American manual alphabet, an example of letters in

ngerspelling.

Guilhem Molinier, a member of the Consistori del Gay

Saber, which was the rst literary academy in the world
and held the Floral Games to award the best troubadour
with the violeta d'aur top prize, gave a denition of the , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
letter in his Leys d'Amors (13281337), a book aimed at
Arabic alphabet: (Alphabetical from right to left) , ,
regulating the then ourishing Occitan poetry:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , .

History

Main article: History of the alphabet

Armenian alphabet: , , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , .

Syriac alphabet: (Alphabetical from right to left) , , ,

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
The rst consonantal alphabet found has emerged around
2000 BCE to represent the language of Semitic workers Cyrillic script: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
in Egypt (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets), and was de- , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
rived from the alphabetic principles of the Egyptian hi- , , , , , , , , , .
eroglyphs. Nearly all alphabets in the world today either
descend directly from this development or were inspired Georgian script: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
by its design.[2] The Greek alphabet, invented around 800 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
BCE, was the rst alphabet assigning letters not only to Greek alphabet: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
consonants, but also to vowels.[3]
, , , , , , , , , .

3
3.1

Types of letters
Various scripts

Hebrew alphabet: (Alphabetical from right to left) , ,

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,.
Latin alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N,
O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.
Hangul:

The following alphabets, abjads, and individual letters are

discussed in related articles. Each represents a dierent Bopomofo:
script:
Bangla alphabet:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Ogham:
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3
Ethiopic weight, or may angle or embellish their forms. A font

is more specic than a typeface, since it species the size

International Phonetic Alphabet - used to represent exact of the letters as well as the form.
pronunciation
For other writing systems and their letters, see List of
writing systems.

In calligraphy, letters are written artistically and may or

may not be consistent throughout a work.

4 Letter frequencies
Main article: Letter frequencies
The average distribution of letters, or the relative frequency of each letters occurrence in text in a given
language can be obtained analyzing large amounts of
representative text. This information can be useful in
cryptography and for other purposes as well. Letter frequencies vary in dierent types of writing. In English,
the most frequently appearing ten letters are e, t, a, o, i,
n, s, h, r, and d, in that order, with the letter e appearing
about 13% of the time.

5 Footnotes
[1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=letter&
allowed_in_frame=0
[2] Himelfarb, Elizabeth J. First Alphabet Found in Egypt,
Archaeology 53, Issue 1 (Jan./Feb. 2000): 21.
A Cyrillic letter shown in upper and lower case, and in italics

3.2

Upper and lower case

Main article: Letter case

Some writing systems have two major forms for each letter: an upper case form (also called capital or majuscule)
and a lower case form (also called minuscule). Upper and
lower case forms represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often
used at the beginning of a sentence, as the rst letter of a
proper name, or in inscriptions or headers. They may also
serve other functions, such as in the German language
where all nouns begin with capital letters.

[3] Millard 1986, p. 396

6 See also
Abecedarium
Articial script
Character (computing)
Collation
Diacritic
Digraph (orthography)
Glyph
Grapheme

3.3

Typeface and font

Main articles: Typeface and Calligraphy

Greek letters used in mathematics

History of the alphabet
Letterform

A letter may be printed in a number of dierent sizes or

forms, depending on choice of typeface. A typeface is a
single, stylistically consistent set of forms for letters (or
glyphs). A particular typeface may alter standard forms
of characters, may present them with dierent optical

Ligature
Orthography
Roman letters used in mathematics

9
Typeface
Typography
Unicode

Sources
Millard, A. R. (1986), The Infancy of the Alphabet, World Archaeology, 17 (3): 390398,
doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978

References
Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds 1996.
The Worlds Writing Systems. ISBN 0-19-5079930.
Powell, Barry B. 1991. Homer and the Origin of the
Greek Alphabet. ISBN 978-0-521-58907-9 | ISBN
0-521-58907-X.
Robinson A. 2003, The Origins of writing in
David Crowely and Paul Heyer 'Communication in
History: Technology, Culture, Society' (fourth edition) Allyn and Bacon Boston pp 3440

External links
Unicode Code Charts

EXTERNAL LINKS

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Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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Letter (alphabet) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_(alphabet)?oldid=758221269 Contributors: XTaran~enwiki, Ahoerstemeier, Darkwind, CecilBlade, Robbot, Mayooranathan, Rursus, Graeme Bartlett, Avala, Vadmium, Beland, Lesgles, MacGyverMagic,
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File:Aslfingerspellalpha.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Aslfingerspellalpha.png License: CC-BY-SA-3.0

Contributors:
self-made
Original artist:
<a href='//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:L%27Aquatique' title='User:L'Aquatique'>L'Aquatique</a><a href='//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
User_talk:L%27Aquatique' title='User talk:L'Aquatique'>talk </a>
File:Commons-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg License: PD Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Cyrillic_JA.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Cyrillic_JA.png License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:Globe_of_letters.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Globe_of_letters.svg License: LGPL Contributors:
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href='//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gnome-globe.svg'
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width='120'
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href='//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Globe_of_letters.png'
class='image'><img
alt=''
src='https://upload.
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srcset='https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Globe_of_letters.png 1.5x' data-le-width='144' data-leheight='116' /></a>
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