the.com/letters
twenty-six shapes that built every argument, love affair, and lie in history
means The individual symbols of an alphabet, or, in the plural, written messages sent from one person to another.
from From Latin 'littera,' a single letter of the alphabet, which in the plural 'litterae' came to mean a written document or epistle — the same root that gives us 'literature' and 'literacy.' It reached English through Old French 'lettre.' The deeper origins of 'littera' are murky; one old guess links it to 'linere,' to smear or daub — fittingly, the act of marking a surface with ink — but scholars regard that connection as uncertain.
- oldest alphabet
- Phoenician script seeded Greek, Latin, and most others
- missing letters
- English once had thorn, eth, and ash
- vowel power
- Just five vowels carry nearly every English word
- least used
- Q appears in under one percent of words
- e dominates
- Most common letter, found in about eleven percent of text
declaration of independence — document signed july 4, 1776 in philadelphia by 56 delegates
magna carta — english charter sealed by king john on june 15, 1215
gettysburg address — speech by lincoln on november 19, 1863 at the battlefield dedication