In a writing system , a letter is a grapheme that generally corresponds to a phoneme —the smallest functional unit of speech—though there is rarely total one-to-one correspondence between the two. An alphabet is a writing system that uses letters.
31-558: S , or for lowercase, s , is the nineteenth letter of the Latin alphabet , used in the English alphabet , the alphabets of other western European languages and other latin alphabets worldwide. Its name in English is ess (pronounced / ˈ ɛ s / ), plural esses . Northwest Semitic šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in ' sh ip'). It originated most likely as
62-411: A multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,
93-509: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in
124-422: A pictogram of a tooth ( שנא ) and represented the phoneme /ʃ/ via the acrophonic principle. Ancient Greek did not have a /ʃ/ "sh" phoneme, so the derived Greek letter Sigma ( Σ ) came to represent the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ . While the letter shape Σ continues Phoenician šîn , its name sigma is taken from the letter Samekh , while the shape and position of samekh but name of šîn
155-539: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c. 1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from
186-499: A voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ . It also commonly represents a voiced alveolar sibilant /z/ , as in 'rose' and 'bands'. Due to yod-coalescence , it may also represent a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ , as in 'sugar', or a voiced palato-alveolar fricative /ʒ/ , as in 'measure'. Final ⟨s⟩ is the usual mark for plural nouns . It is the regular ending of English third person present tense verbs . In some words of French origin, ⟨s⟩
217-540: A circulating library. In 1788-1789, he operated a type foundry called the British Letter Foundry in collaboration with punchcutter Richard Austin . Revivals of these typefaces have been made under the name of Bell and Austin . Bell died in Fulham in 1831, summed up by publisher Charles Knight as a "mischievous spirit, the very Puck of booksellers." He was the uncle of the engraver Edward Bell . Bell
248-423: A separate phoneme, most likely /ʃ/ "sh" (transliterated as ś ). The early Latin alphabet adopted sigma, but not san, as Old Latin did not have a /ʃ/ "sh" phoneme. The shape of Latin S arises from Greek Σ by dropping one out of the four strokes of that letter. The (angular) S-shape composed of three strokes existed as a variant of the four-stroke letter Σ already in the epigraphy of Western Greek alphabets , and
279-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have
310-506: Is continued in the xi . Within Greek, the name of sigma was influenced by its association with the Greek word σίζω (earlier *sigj- ), "to hiss". The original name of the letter "Sigma" may have been san , but due to the early history of the Greek epichoric alphabets , "san" came to be identified as a separate letter, Ϻ . Herodotus reported that "san" was the name given by the Dorians to
341-418: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. John Bell (publisher) John Bell (1745–1831)
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#1732842016012372-708: Is occasionally reduced to three strokes ( ᛋ ) from the later 5th century, and appears regularly with three strokes in Younger Futhark . The ⟨sh⟩ digraph for English /ʃ/ arose in Middle English (alongside ⟨sch⟩ ), replacing the Old English ⟨sc⟩ digraph. Similarly, Old High German ⟨sc⟩ was replaced by ⟨sch⟩ in Early Modern High German orthography. The minuscule form ſ, called
403-448: Is silent, as in 'isle' or 'debris'. The letter ⟨s⟩ is the seventh most common letter in English and the third-most common consonant after ⟨t⟩ and ⟨n⟩ . It is the most common letter for the first letter of a word in the English language. In German , ⟨s⟩ represents: When doubled ( ⟨ss⟩ ), it represents a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , as in 'müssen'. In
434-454: The long s , developed in the early medieval period, within the Visigothic and Carolingian hands, with predecessors in the half-uncial and cursive scripts of Late Antiquity . It remained standard in western writing throughout the medieval period and was adopted in early printing with movable types. It existed alongside minuscule "round" or "short" s , which were at the time only used at
465-586: The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ in most dialects when syllable-final, and [ʒ] in European Portuguese Islão (Islam) or, in many sociolects of Brazilian Portuguese , esdrúxulo ( proparoxytone ). In some Andalusian dialects of Spanish, it merged with Peninsular Spanish ⟨c⟩ and ⟨z⟩ and is now pronounced /θ/ . In Hungarian , it represents /ʃ/ . In Turkmen , it represents /θ/ . In several Western Romance languages , like Spanish and French ,
496-593: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c. 3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c. 1800 BCE , representing
527-488: The London printer John Bell (1745–1831) pioneered the change. His edition of Shakespeare, in 1785, was advertised with the claim that he "ventured to depart from the common mode by rejecting the long 'ſ' in favor of the round one, as being less liable to error....." The Times of London made the switch from the long to the short s with its issue of 10 September 1803. Encyclopædia Britannica 's 5th edition, completed in 1817,
558-599: The Most Eminent English Poets (1781), was published from 1777 to 1783. Each volume cost just six shillings, much less than what was commonly charged. Bell's joint-stock organisation of his publishing company defied "the trade" — forty dominant publishing companies — to establish a monopoly on top publications. In addition to the extensive Poets of Great Britain , he published book sets on Shakespeare and The British Theatre . The drawings and illustrations in these works influenced later publishers. He also ran
589-758: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c. 900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet
620-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage
651-483: The digraph ⟨sch⟩ , it represents a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ , as in 'schon'. In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨s⟩ represents the voiceless alveolar or voiceless dental sibilant /s/ . In many Romance languages , it also represents the voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant /z/ , as in Portuguese mesa (table). In Portuguese , it may represent
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#1732842016012682-622: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩
713-414: The end of words. In most Western orthographies, the ſ gradually fell out of use during the second half of the 18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century. In Spain, the change was mainly accomplished between 1760 and 1766. In France, the change occurred between 1782 and 1793. Printers in the United States stopped using the long s between 1795 and 1810. In English orthography,
744-707: The final ⟨s⟩ is the usual mark of plural nouns . In the International Phonetic Alphabet , ⟨s⟩ represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called
775-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and
806-556: The same letter called "Sigma" by the Ionians . The Western Greek alphabet used in Cumae was adopted by the Etruscans and Latins in the 7th century BC, and over the following centuries, it developed into a range of Old Italic alphabets , including the Etruscan alphabet and the early Latin alphabet . In Etruscan , the value /s/ of Greek sigma (𐌔) was maintained, while san (𐌑) represented
837-411: The three and four strokes variants existed alongside one another in the classical Etruscan alphabet. In other Italic alphabets ( Venetic , Lepontic ), the letter could be represented as a zig-zagging line of any number between three and six strokes. The Italic letter was also adopted into Elder Futhark , as Sowilō ( ᛊ ), and appears with four to eight strokes in the earliest runic inscriptions, but
868-605: Was an English publisher. Originally a bookseller and printer, he also innovated in typography, commissioning an influential typeface that omitted the long s . He drew the reading public to better literature by ordering attractive art to accompany the printed work. From 1769, Bell owned a bookshop in the Strand, London , the "British Library". His 109-volume, literature-for-the-masses The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill , which rivalled Samuel Johnson 's Lives of
899-553: Was one of the founders of the Morning Post , a London daily newspaper, in 1772. In 1787 he launched The World , with Edward Topham . Later he set up the Sunday newspaper Bell's Weekly Messenger , the women's monthly magazine La Belle Assemblée , Bell's classical arrangement of fugitive poetry (1789-1810) and other periodicals. Bell's British Theatre was published in 1776–1778, and sold in sets 140 plays in 21 volumes, each with
930-504: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in
961-543: Was the last edition to use the long s . In German orthography , long s was retained in Fraktur ( Schwabacher ) type as well as in standard cursive ( Sütterlin ) well into the 20th century, until official use of that typeface was abolished in 1941. The ligature of ſs (or ſz ) was retained; however, it gave rise to the Eszett ⟨ ß ⟩ in contemporary German orthography. In English , ⟨s⟩ represents