Alphabet and Typography

• The alphabet, a system of writing, developed in the ancient Near

East and transmitted from the northwest Semites to the Greeks, in
which each symbol ideally represents one sound unit in the spoken
language.
• The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Latin
Language word alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Greek
nλφάβητος (alphabētos). The Greek word was made from the first
two letters, alpha and beta - the first two letters of the Phoenician
alphabet; aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, which also meant
house.
• The word, typography, is derived from the Greek words τύπος
typos "form" or "impression" and γράφειν graphein "to write“.
• Typography is the art and technique to make written language
readable, and appealing when displayed.

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 Alphabet and Its Advantages
A System of writing has some advantages:
• It extends the range of our communication both in time and
geography.
• It allows us to communicate outside of shouting range.
• It allows us to transmit ideas and culture over long distances and
through generations.
• A writing system offers an extension to our memory encoding
information thanks to written records even if the memory trace in
our brain vanishes.
• The ability to write assists us no longer be limited to just those in
our immediate presence and moment when we communicate.
• A writing system provides a personal memory upgrade as well.

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 Different Kinds of Writing Systems
Based on What the Symbols Represent
• Pictographic Systems: the symbols are actual pictures of the
objects that they represent. The Sumerians were using pictograms
at the close of the fourth millennium BC, in Mesopotamia (modern-
day Iraq). Cuneiforms were initially scratched into soft clay tablets
(3000 BC) . The word of ‘bird’ , for example, existed at first as a
simple pictorial representation of a bird.
• It has the following advantage: the system is understandable by
speakers of different languages.
• But there are disadvantages of a purely pictographic system:
• first, not everyone is an adequate artist;
• secondly, many objects are not obviously pictured: mind, beauty,
evil, even son (the solution: homophones: b4 – before or k9 for
canine (a dog). Another option: to use an image of the sun to mean
‘son’. It’s an example of using associative symbols with sound

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 Ideographic Systems
• A symbol represents either concepts, abstract or concrete, or
separate sounds. A system has certain advantages in case of
representing concepts:
• It has greater expressiveness than a pictographic system. Unlike a
writing system in which symbols represent sounds, an ideographic
system is understandable by speakers of different languages even
if the language itself has changes significantly. Though the number
can reach thousands of symbols as, for example, the Chinese have
to learn thousands of characters to express themselves.
• It is clear that ideographic symbols that represent sounds require
fewer symbols than a language in which a symbol stands for a thing,
an idea or a concept. Though unlike a writing system in which
symbols represent concepts, an ideographic system representing
sounds is not understandable by speakers of different languages.
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 Phonographic Systems
• Segmental system: symbols represent only consonants like Egyptian hieroglyphs
(sacred writing) (about 1500 BC).
• Syllabic system when symbols represent syllables is called a syllabary. For
example, it is possible to have special symbols for the syllables ki, ka, ko, ku. A
language with considerable constraints on syllable structure could have a
manageable number of possible syllables and consequently requires a small number
of symbols, like Japanese that uses two syllabaries: hiragana for native words and
katakana for foreign borrowings.
• Alphabetic systems are systems in which each symbol ideally represents a single
sound. But spelling lags changes in spoken language. For example ‘k’ in “knee” or
“know” used to be pronounced but isn’t anymore. Most of the alphabets that are
currently in use descend from the same source: the Greek alphabet. For example,
both: the Roman and the Cyrillic alphabets.
• The Greeks simply adopted most of the Phoenician (literally “purple people”)
consonant symbols (ktb – pertains to writing) but added the vowels that the
Phoenicians had left out. The Greeks noticed that the Phoenician system had
symbols for consonants that did not exist in Greek. The Greeks used the unneeded
consonants symbols for vowels.
• Note that the Bible’s book of Revelation uses the Greek alphabet as a metaphor for
God in more than one spot: “ I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end…”
Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.

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 The Latin/Roman Alphabet
• The Greek Alphabet was carried over by Greek colonists to the
Italian peninsula, where it gave rise to a variety of alphabets used to
write the Italic languages. The Roman alphabet came to us through
the Etruscans who had borrowed it from the Greeks
• The Romans often looked East to Greece for ideas on religion,
education, culture and government. The alphabet was one of many
things that the Romans borrowed.
• One of these became the Latin or Roman alphabet , which was
spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire. Even
after the fall of the Roman state, the alphabet survived in intellectual
and religious works. It eventually became used for the descendant
languages of Latin (the Romance languages and then for most of
the other languages of Europe.

• The problems of transliteration (attempting to present a foreign

word by matching the characters of one system)
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 The English Alphabet
• The alphabet that is used by English was adopted from the early
Latin alphabet by creating new characters/symbols to meet the
needs of English and to adapt to changes in the Latin language.
• It was discovered that some of symbols from the Latin alphabet
were unnecessary and that other symbols must be added.
• The English system uses various combinations of vowel symbols
and the presence or absence of a final unpronounced e (or e mute)
to indicate its various vowels.
• Many other cultures have added diacritics to the vowels to augment
the number of sounds that can be represented (examples)
• The innovation of using a sequence of letters (a digraph)to
represent a single sound introduces the notion of spelling rules ( sh,
ph, ch)

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 Typography
• Typography is the art or process of representing words when typing
and printing. The size, the type of fonts can be important for the
sake of readability. The space left between words can also be the
subject of readability.
• When the letters are too close, it makes your design to look too
crowded.
• If you want your design to attract attention, readers are going to
have to be able to read it clearly. In this case:
• a font should not be too small,
• fonts and background should not clash;
• transparency effects should not make the text hard to see;
• the spacing between the lines should not be too tight or too loose;
• There is still a valid question: What fonts are easiest to read on
small screens like on smart or i-phones?