Definition: alphabet
An alphabet is all the letters that people use to write words in a language.
When you say all the letters of an alphabet, you usually say them in a certain order. The English
alphabet begins with the letter A and ends with Z. Also the English alphabet has upper case and
lower case letters. Upper case letters like "D" are called capital letters. The lower case letters,
like "d", are not capitalized. Many languages use an alphabet that is similar to the English one,
but some languages use very different alphabets.
Fun Facts
1. The English word "alphabet" comes from the Greek words for the first two letters of the Greek
alphabet: alpha and beta. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet.
2. A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet is called a "pangram". A famous
pangram is: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".
3. The letter Q is the only letter that does not appear in the name of any U.S. state.
4. English writing and printing has two kinds of of letters - majuscule letters, or capital letters, and
minuscule letters (small letters), like M and m. But before the Fall of Rome, Romans wrote only
in capital letters.
As handwriting continued to evolve, so did the use of capital and small letters.
5. Upper case and lower case started as practical printing terms. In traditional hand printing, individual metal letters were stored in a wooden cabinet called a case. The capital letters were usually kept
in the upper section, and the smaller letters were kept in the lower section. "Upper case", "Lower
case", get it?
6. The most commonly used letter in English is "E". The least commonly used letter in English is "Z".
7. About 100 languages use the same alphabet as English, making it one of the most widely used alphabets in the world.