Evolution Of The Alphabet

Today's alphabet did not start off looking exactly as we know it. For starters, its basis was lifted from the Phonecian writing system around 9th Century BC. But the Phonecian letters were only concenants, so the Greeks took the letters that they did not use, and changed their meaning. For instance, the letter Alef, a glottal stop, was instead used for the vowel A(alpha). At its first use, many different Greek states altered the alphabet slightly for their dialect, until the Ionian version of the alphabet became a common acceptance.

At first, the Greeks wrote from right to left, like the Phonecians, until it was changed to boustrophedon(meaning, "ox turning"), where the writing direction changes after each line. An example would be starting on the top, writing right to left, then the next line writing left to right, and so on. To confuse things more, the alphabet was also written in reverse as the writing directions reversed. Eventually this was dropped, and left to right became a standard around 5th century BC.

Eventually the Romans would take on the Greek's 21 letter alphabet, and revise it, and add several more letters. U and W were added around 1000 AD, and J finally around 1500 AD.

The Serif

The serif became the next addtion to our alphabet. Roman Scribes would chisel letters into marbel very quickly, creating an easy technique to produce the letterform, and the serif was added for this reason. Today it has been kept not only because of its unique look, but also because the shape of the Serif helps guide the reader across the page.

Carolingian Miniscule

One of the many accomplishments of the Carolingian era, is the preservation of manuscripts. Monks of this time would copy works like the Bible, and other famous works. 90% of Ancient Roman works we have today, came from the Carolingian manuscripts. Eventually Abbey Corbey would develop a series of clean, easy to read, lowercase letters. These letters would survive and then be revived by the Renaissance.


So the evolution of today's alphabet was quite long, with many adaptations, alterations, and revisions.

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