Letter (alphabet)

Letter (alphabet)

A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone (sound) in the spoken form of the language.

Written signs in other writing systems are best called syllabograms (which denote a syllable) or logograms (which denote a word or phrase).

Read more about Letter (alphabet):  Definition and Usage, History, Letter Frequencies

Famous quotes containing the word letter:

    Of all the barbarous middle ages, that
    Which is most barbarous is the middle age
    Of man! it is—I really scarce know what;
    But when we hover between fool and sage,
    And don’t know justly what we would be at—
    A period something like a printed page,
    Black letter upon foolscap, while our hair
    Grows grizzled, and we are not what we were.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)