Letter Perfect: the A-to-Z History Of Our Alphabet

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Letter Perfect: the A-to-Z History Of Our Alphabet

3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 · rating details · 256 ratings · 39 reviews

Letters are tangible language. Joining together in endless combinations to actually show speech, letters convey our messages and tell our stories. While we encounter these tiny shapes hundreds of times a day, we take for granted the long, fascinating history behind one of the most fundamental of human inventions -- the alphabet.

The heart of the book is the 26 fact-filled “...more

Paperback, 416 pages

Published August 3rd 2004 by Vintage Canada (first published August 19th 2003)

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Nov 15, 2010 Maurizio Codogno rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished

Anche questo libro era fuori commercio, e l'ho acquistato di seconda mano dai fondi di una biblioteca (dello Stoke-on-Trent College), dove in effetti non era mai stato chiesto in prestito. Il tema, come dice il titolo stesso, è l'alfabeto, inteso come insieme delle 26 lettere che lo compongono; dopo un capitolo introduttivo che racconta come dal primo alfabeto (semitico ma egizio, precedente a quello fenicio) l'idea sia stata man mano presa da altre popolazioni che se lo adattavano ai propri suo...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Caroline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: language

Language Visible is a most excellent book. Finally, all my questions about the alphabet are answered: why we have hard and soft Gs, two sizes of letters, and two different styles of printing lowercase a. Now I know why the Spanish J is pronounced as the English H and why C is duplicated by K and S. It feels like I have been waiting for this for years.

It is written in an informal, conversational style, with the occasional dip into irreverence. Originally a series of magazine articles, there is a...more

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Dec 11, 2009 kingshearte rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: word-nerd-books, non-fiction

"David Sacks has embarked on a fun, lively, and learned excursion into the alphabet - and into cultural history - in Letter Perfect. Beginning with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 BC), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt, the book traces the history of our alphabet through the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans and up through medieval Europe to the present day. But the heart of the book is the twenty-six fact-filled "biographies" of letters A through Z, eac...more "David Sacks has embarked on a fun, lively, and learned excursion into the alphabet - and into cultural history - in Letter Perfect. Beginning with the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions (circa 1800 BC), recently discovered by archaeologists in Egypt, the book traces the history of our alphabet through the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans and up through medieval Europe to the present day. But the heart of the book is the twenty-six fact-filled "biographies" of letters A through Z, each one identifying the letter's particular significance for modern readers, tracing its development from ancient forms, and discussing its noteworthy role in literature and other media. We learn, for example, why letter X may have a sinister and sexual aura, how B came to signify second best, why the word 'mother' in many languages starts with M. Combining facts both odd and essential, Letter Perfect is cultural history at its most accessible and enjoyable."

This book really was quite enjoyable. I learned a ton of quite fascinating things about our letters (most of which I'll probably forget, but they were still fascinating), and was thoroughly engrossed in it. Unlike that last Diana Gabaldon I read, where sometimes I had to convince myself to pick it up and keep reading, I found myself snatching all kinds of random moments to read this one. Always a nice quality in a book.

My only complaint really, is that Sacks sometimes has a tendency to write the book more like a reference book, that you might just pick up and turn to chapter K, for example. The letters in our alphabet share a lot of the same history, especially going all the way back to that Phoenician alphabet, which he covered quite well in the introductory chapter. But a lot of bits of information that, by K, we've already read 10 times, get repeated yet again. Things like that Phoenician writing ran right-to-left. And that early Greek writing ran both ways until they settled on left-to-right. Or that the letters as carved in the Trajan inscription of AD 113 inspired current Times New Roman type fonts. Or that the uncial style was developed for ease of handwriting. Having read those things 26 times, I suspect I'll remember them...

Anyway, aside from that, as I said, this was actually quite a lively read, and if even one is not a word and language geek like me, one would probably find this book at least a little bit interesting.
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Sep 06, 2011 Sammy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

An interesting, if overlong, experiment. "The Alphabet" is a much-needed book and wonderful reading for people like myself. Because my personal and professional passions lie with writing and language, I'm always frustrated by dimwits who want to "Reform" the language, or somehow make it "easier" and "more logical". Look, every language has its advantages and disadvantages: this is what comes of being an organic creation, particularly for our culture which is lucky enough to have evolved with bot...more An interesting, if overlong, experiment. "The Alphabet" is a much-needed book and wonderful reading for people like myself. Because my personal and professional passions lie with writing and language, I'm always frustrated by dimwits who want to "Reform" the language, or somehow make it "easier" and "more logical". Look, every language has its advantages and disadvantages: this is what comes of being an organic creation, particularly for our culture which is lucky enough to have evolved with both written and oral histories. The beauty and depth of our language (even if it isn't quite as terrifyingly specific as, say, German!) has delighted me since I first learned to read, and I hope it does so forever.

Hmm. Pardon me for that.

"The Alphabet" gives each of our 26 letters a chapter, allowing Sacks to discuss how the letter came to be drawn, pronounced and utilised, as well as discussing the origin of any anomalies or odd facts about the letter. It's an admirable project which allows him to discuss anything under the umbrella topic - the similarities between C and G; the origins of why some letters such as F are pronounced ("ef") more forcefully than the majority ("vee", "tee", etc) - as well as providing some basic information on current theories of the development of language, and ways in which the various 'middlemen' - Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans - gave us the language we have today. Plus, if you ever wanted to impress people at a dinner party by knowing why A or Q are drawn that way, now's your chance!

It's not perfect, as some reviewers have mentioned, but I'm not sure how it COULD be. It's true that some elements become repetitive (understandably, given that many of our letters grew up together). Possibly, the book works best as a coffee table piece: read the introduction, which covers linguistics, and then pick a letter at random. Unfortunately, the downside is that if you read it cover to cover, you will find it to be hard-going at times, and it's clear that Sacks is struggling to make the last chapters as interesting as the first.

Still, I think that's rather unfair condemnation. "The Alphabet" is a worthy paean to the rich wonders of our 26 letters, showcasing just how much information each one of them can convey. By the end, I came to think of them like a family, and I'm glad to have read this insight into just why our language is the way it is. It's certainly not the greatest - or only - book you should read on the subject, but even if you only read the first few chapters and then pick your favourite letters, you're bound to learn something new!(less)

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Jan 22, 2011 Nikki rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book tells the story of how our letters came to be. The story of many of them is similar. Start with the Phoenicians, move to the Greeks, an ill-understood stop with the Etruscans, (or is that the other way around?) then the Romans, then Anglo-Saxons with some input from the French. The books is interesting and accessible (reviewers call it "lively" and "engaging") but there is quite a bit of overlap because of the way he chose to tell it--one letter at a time. Because letters are related i...more

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Aug 18, 2010 Kristine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Technically I haven't actually finished, but since every chapter is sort of a stand-alone essay on a letter, I'm going to claim I like the book.

I think the intro is worth reading, even if you go no further with the book. The origins of our letters are tied up in the history of human civilization, and it's fascinating to read how each letter came into being, and then evolved through borrowings and adaptations, both in sound and in shape. A used to be upside-down, and started as a symbol for ox....more

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Dec 12, 2011 David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sacks' tour though the history of the alphabet is enjoyable, and he does a fabulous job of tracing the development of sounds and pronunciation through time. The lengths of the chapters get steadily shorter the further you get into the book - A is a lot longer than T, for instance, even though those two have similar prominence in English (the old linotype order was ETAOIN SHRDLU - that doesn't quite match the actual letter frequency, but is close enough for an approximation). Mixed in with this a...more

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Feb 11, 2011 Steve rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sachs provides a sporadically excellent description of the historic development of the alphabet. As opposed to a system based on actual visual representations of the word, pictographs, or writing systems based on symbols to represent words, logograms, the recognisable series of 26 letters can re-combine to form countless patterns of phonemes. Such flexibility can also be transferred across different languages, making the alphabet one of history's most enduring legacies. From it's emergence in Eg...more Sachs provides a sporadically excellent description of the historic development of the alphabet. As opposed to a system based on actual visual representations of the word, pictographs, or writing systems based on symbols to represent words, logograms, the recognisable series of 26 letters can re-combine to form countless patterns of phonemes. Such flexibility can also be transferred across different languages, making the alphabet one of history's most enduring legacies. From it's emergence in Egypt around 2,000BC, probably as an aid to the humble masses of mercenaries and slave labour from semitic cultures in the Near East excluded from the mysteries of hieroglyphics, this small collection of symbols is easily memorised, and has thus become the vehicle for mass literacy. It was adopted by previously illiterate societies and spread through conquest, cultural politics, and as a corollary of trade. Though the Arabic alphabet is associated with Arabic culture, it serves other tongues such as Farsi in Iran or Pashto in Afghanistan. Even in the twentieth and twenty-first century, the adoption of an alphabet can signify desires to espouse modernism, such as Ataturk's switch from the Arabic to Roman alphabet in 1928, or the similar exchange by the trio of ex-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan from Cyrillic to Roman. The adoption of an alphabet has also led to tragic cases which have spelt historical division - Serbo-Croat has shared features, but due to the rivalry of medieval missionary churches, is written in Cyrillic by Serbs and in Roman by Croats. Similarly, Hindi and Urdu are fundamentally the same but use different script. The author also provides commenatry on the history of attempts to rationalise the spelling rules of English and how the latter may conflict with how our letters have come down to us. Interestingly, he illustrates how American and British spellings diverged. Noah Webster was an American patriot, who took a hiatus in his studies at Yale to serve in the american war of independence, and became acquainted with both Washington and Franklin. Determined to contribute to American identity and unity, he argued that distinct American spellings would end cultural subservience to Britain. Thus, he introduced many spellings, many of which endured, in his dictionary published in 1828. The first traceable progenitor of most of our letters, due to the presence of sample script, is the Phoenician alphabet, which traversed the Near East and Mediterranean between 900-700BC. They were the innovators in seafaring and traded luxuries from the east for raw materials from the west, and composed a collection of trading ports in modern-day Lebanon who extended their influence to trading posts around the Mediterranean shores. Though the script had no vowel letters, being regarded as being of less import than consonants, the transferability allowed it to be adapted wholesale by the Greeks around 800BC. Sachs provides a letter-by-letter synopsis of the most interesting facts surrounding the alphabet, and the origins of some expressions. With regards to our letter 'A', the author reveals that it's progenitor was the Phoenician symbol 'aleph' which was representative of the head of an oxen, and phonetically was equivalent to the glottal stop which graces Cockney accents. It would be the Greeks who would turn the symbol through 90 degrees to our more familair upright position, and change the pronunciation to 'ah'. The author also details how this letter has become commonly identified with its primary position in the alphabet, denoting rank and supremacy. Moreover, Sachs reveals that the expression 'A-okay' has entered usage as the result of a case of mishearing and misinterpretation - during the first manned orbital NASA spaceflight, a simple response of 'okay' from Alan Shepard became misreported and seemingly captured a niche as classifying excellence. Our letter 'B' similarly stems from a Phoenician counterpart denoting 'house' and being named 'beth' - hence Bethlehem can be translated as 'house of bread' and Bethesda as 'merciful house'. Sachs lists the complexity in terms of pronunciation of 'c' when combined with other letters, with scholars as early as the 1550s suggesting spelling being closer tied to phonetics, with this particular letter drawing the ire of dramatist Ben Jonson in his posthumously published english Grammar of 1640. Likewise Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1768 that the letters C,J,W and Y be abandoned with their values assigned to other letters or other symbols. Indeed, the author reveals that in both Phoenician and Greek alphabets, the third letter was their equivalent of our letter 'g' and that 'c' evolved from Etruscan interpretation of the former letter that they did not possess, and gained prominence in the Roman alphabet - though until the later period of the Roman Empire it was pronounced as a 'hard c' so that Caesar would have been pronounced 'Kye-sar'. Today the majority of 'soft c' words such as 'grace' or 'cellar' entered our language through Norman French. The letter 'e' is by far the most commonly encountered in our language representing 15 different vowel sounds, while the diminutive form of the letter has now become enmeshed with technological progress through representing 'electronic' in 'email' or 'e-commerce'. As Sachs explains, it is also unique in appearing to denote silence by a uniquely English spelling rule. When 'e' appears at the end of a word preceded by a string of letters formed by a vowel followed by a consonant, signalling that the previous vowel sound is long. Thus, we can distinguish 'fat' from 'fate' and 'wine' as against 'win'. This aspect was introduced in the late 1600s to simplify the chaos which characterised spelling in the language as a result of proposals made a hundred years earlier by the Elizabethan grammarian and headmaster, Richard Mulcaster,tutor of Edmund Spenser and Thomas Kyd. Amazingly, the original Semitic meaning of this letter was 'hey' and was represented by a stick figure with arms raised denoting surprise. The very pronunciation of 'f' as a fricative has perhaps led to its denoting swear words and negative concepts such as 'failure' with Cicero calling it the 'unsweetest sound' in Latin, which is ironic as the symbol 'f' historically denoted the sound 'w', there being no 'f' sound in the Phoenician language. It would be the Romans who would associate the ltter with the sound we know today. The transplanting of 'g'g by 'c' as third letter in the alphabet also entailed the latter serving as symbol for both sounds, until in the later Roman empire 'g' was reintroduced in its now familiar spot. With regard to 'h' many early grammarians questioned its true value as a letter, and the author suggests that in other languages it would be an accent mark accompanying another letter, as it is in modern Greek. The history of 'i' and 'j' are interconnected with the former serving as the latter's symbol until late Medieval Europe. In fact, both lower-case 'i' and 'j' are inventions which accompanied the rise of the printing press in the fifteenth century to make script more distinguishable. The modernity of 'j' is also evidenced by the fact that Samuel Johnson in his renowned dictionary of 1755, though recognising its role in spelling, does not include the letter within the alphabet - hence Johnson's listings under 'i' include words such as 'jabber' and 'jealous'. Those who seek to rationalise the spelling rules of English have recommended the abandonment of both 'c' and 'q' for the more purely phonetic 'k'. Sachs reveals that this unnecessary complexity has been bequeathed to us by the Etruscans who introduced three distinct symbols for 'k' which are the forebears of 'c', 'k', and 'q'. Being a labial sound 'm' is one of the most accessible sounds to infants and some linguists theorise that just as babies learn to imitate adult sounds, so could baby sounds have influenced the development of adult words - hence the word for 'mother' can be 'mama' in English or Swahili or 'ma' in Chinese or 'maa' in Hindi. As the letters pass the reader by, Sachs seems to lose impetus, finding true points of interest harder to come by, thereby making the read less engrossing in the second half.(less)

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Dec 08, 2011 Rebecca Makkai rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I grew up with two linguistics professors for parents, and I tend to be unimpressed by vernacular linguistics books if only because I grew up hearing so much of this stuff at the dinner table. But Sacks branches out in so many different directions (often kind of free-associating, though productively) and includes such recent discoveries that almost all of this was fresh for me. It was little repetitive, as if he didn't trust that people would read the book sequentially. He's probably right that...more

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Dec 06, 2010 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Okay, I was totally confused in the library since I could've sworn the title was "Letter Perfect", but I found it (after some searching) as "Language Visible". So, apparently they did a title switcharoo at some point. If you're looking for this one, check under both titles. (Edit: The hardbound version will be titled "Language Visible", the paperback "Letter Perfect". The British version has yet another title.)

I haven't quite finished this yet, but have found it to be a worthwhile read thus far....more

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Feb 17, 2009 Black Elephants rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

It was during a free day in Fukuoka in a horrible, ghastly, sinful bookshop that carries a selection of English books that would make any foreigner living in Japan tremble in delight and despair that so much information on science, Japanese literature, modern novels, beach reads, cookbooks, art books could exist for ingestion where I decided to forego another novel of pleasure and improve my mind through "extensive reading". Who would have believed that a randomly chosen book would prove to be s...more It was during a free day in Fukuoka in a horrible, ghastly, sinful bookshop that carries a selection of English books that would make any foreigner living in Japan tremble in delight and despair that so much information on science, Japanese literature, modern novels, beach reads, cookbooks, art books could exist for ingestion where I decided to forego another novel of pleasure and improve my mind through "extensive reading". Who would have believed that a randomly chosen book would prove to be so pleasurable?

Sacks is writing about the alphabet from "a" to "z" and about how each letter was born, grew up, "married, divorced and now works at a library in Yale." (Do forgive the gratuitous literary references. I`ll cite them at the end, kay?). What it really does though, is just confirm what my whole sojourn in Japan has taught me: Language is the most shifty, flighty, indecisive invention that has ever popped out of human minds. Just take a glance at this general evolutionary course of our alphabet. Scholars believe that ancient Semitic soldiers, hired by Egypt probably plagiarized the hieroglyphic system. How do they know this? Ancient graffiti on ancient Egyptian roads of course! But seriously, the Semitic warriors found the symbols too complicated and dumbed them down into shapes that were easier to carve. These early carvings and sounds were the fledging predecessors of our modern alphabet. From there, the alphabet migrated to Phoenicia (of Odyssian fame), which was a country of great seafarers. These seafarers spread their literary disease across the Mediterranean where it infected the Greeks. The Greeks, from their invasions into Italy, passed on this ancient virus to the Etruscans who left it homeless in the streets of a little unknown city called Rome. The Roman Empire rises and falls. Then the French take a hand at changing the face and sounds of our letters so much so that when the Normans invade England, they decide to stuff these grammatical ideas down the throats of their new serfs!

A problem with the book is that David Sacks is not a linguistic scholar and is writing this book for the average person. In that regard, sometimes he doesn`t trust his reader to make the correct mental jump and ends up leading them too much by the hand, like a concerned parent. (This is unlike our alphabet who was left to grown with little advice from its elders). Yet, Sacks is writing this book to inform and entertain, and it does! A lot! Like how "F" had a troublesome childhood or how "K" will forever be jealous of the ambiguous "C". And the book is spectucularly up-to-date on its linguistic information, having only been published in 2003.

Personally, this book gave me a very good sense of how foreign languages are transcribed. The English language has been shifting and rolling about, changing every generation to either remain more true or become simpler to understand. Likewise, with the Japanese language, I think of its formative romaji years—when scholars were trying to figure out how to write Japanese in a language Westerners could understand. Or in Japanese, how many Western words will they ingest and turn into Japanese?

If you`re a lover of language, you will enjoy this book. I`m going to bed now to read how "Z" made it to the end of the alphabet!

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May 08, 2008 Pita-eater rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: language, typography, writing, alphabet

It is easy to forget the alphabet’s individual letters with so many lovely words to distract us. And yet, the Roman alphabet has a fascinating history, just as the English language does. In Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z, David Sacks traces the history of the alphabet from 2000 B.C. through present times and devotes a chapter to each letter of the alphabet. Sacks got the idea for the book while writing Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. His fascination wi...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Nicholas Whyte added it · review of another edition

http://nhw.livejournal.com/490899.html[return][return]I was disappointed. The book can't quite decide whether it's a serious investigation of the history of orthography or a collection of fun trivia snippets. I did learn a lot about the first Semitic alphabet, from which most others are descended, and its descent to us through the Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans and French. But I was disappointed not to learn more about other alphabets than ours - especially the Georgian script which as m...more

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Mar 10, 2013 Peggy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, nonfiction, length-over-200p

This is an entertaining, rather than scholarly, treatment of the history of the English alphabet. It is obvious that it was originally serialized, but the forward was worth the price of the book.
A note of caution, however, the Kindle conversion is terrible and unless it is fixed, I cannot recommend that you read it in that format.

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Apr 28, 2009 Tim VanSant rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like this book a lot. It's a bit repetitive, but that let's each chapter stand on its own. (You wouldn't read them out of order though, would you?) So much of why English words are spelled and pronounced the way they are just makes more sense to me in light of how our alphabet developed. This was a good companion to The Adventure of English.

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Apr 11, 2013 Keith Slade rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lang-or-writing, history, typogr-or-design

Really fascinating book on how the individual characters of our current alphabet came to be. Many go clear back before the Phoenicians and then developed through the Greek and Roman alphabets. They used to all have meanings too. The "A" is an upside down "ox head" for instance.

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Jun 11, 2011 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can't help quoting things from this book: have become a rattlebag of alphabet trivia. Fascinating. Takes ages to read because I have to study all the stone carving pictures in details and also read all the asides that are in tiny writing…

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Feb 20, 2009 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So much fun for a language geek like me. All the strange inconsistencies and illogical conventions of modern spelling suddenly make perfect sense. Intelligent but playful, treating each letter like an old friend with a colorful history.

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Jul 04, 2012 Guilherme Müller rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Excellent book about the alphabet and its history. The little letters carry so much stories with them! It's very nice to know their origins and evolution. The book is very entertaining and easy to read.

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Jan 07, 2012 Joe added it · review of another edition

I read this book a few years ago and really enjoyed it. It starts with the earliest forms of writing and traces the development of the modern alphabet. I highly recommended this book.

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Mar 29, 2010 Liz DeCoster rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

While the information in this book was interesting, it could have used another round of editing. Compiled from a series of essays written for a Canadian newspaper, a lot of the source materials for quotations and examples were repetitive, and whole chunks of information were reiterated in every other chapter. There were whole sidebars to the book printed in size 8 italicized font, a pain to read even for somebody with good eyesight. Many of the examples provided by the author might be appropriat...more

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Feb 26, 2010 Deirdre rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fromlibrary, non-fiction

Yes it is an interesting look at each letter of the alphabet. It looks at how they changed and shifted over the years and the hows and whys of their usage in different languages.

As an occasional calligrapher though, I did find it lacking in that while he mentions letter shift and changes he really doesn't reflect the materials used with letter shifts. I also had to smile when I noticed him discussing how i as j was often used at the beginning and end of words and I would lay odds that it was bec...more

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Mar 09, 2010 Paul Gannaway rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

A good read. Pretty predictable in some parts (it went from A through to Z), and some of the letters share history, so you do read a few things more than once. All in all an interesting read.

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Jun 06, 2012 Dimitra rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: i-dipped-into-it

Fascinating, but a little too repetitive for my taste (no doubt because the book developed out of a newspaper column).

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Sep 23, 2012 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, writing

Really great look into how we got our letters. Fascinating

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Jul 05, 2009 Maria rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good information in general. Some factual errors however which I found a little disappointing (e.g description of the pronunciation of certain letter sounds in French). Mostly seems factually accurate though. I did enjoy the explanation of some of our phrases which use letters in them. I am very much put off though by the atrocious jokes which I hope he was forced to put in by his editor. If the jokes had been left out I would've given this a better rating. Witty they are not.

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Nov 02, 2011 BarbaraNathalie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This little book is a gem for anyone who is enamored with the story of our alphabet. I am an alphaphile(I'll have to look that up to see if I have it right). I love our words and learning all the nuances asociated with them and the letters that create them. This book is a fun fest for anyone who is curious about how our letters came to be. It is also an intelligent discourse about the linguistic nature of letters. Loved it!

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Dec 05, 2010 Shannon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It must've taken David Sacks a million years to do the research for this, which of course implies that he's built his own time machine. Then again, if he has a time machine, it'd probably be easier to do his research. Nevermind. Anyway, great book: the alphabet is truly one of humankind's greatest inventions, followed closely by the internet and kittens.

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Apr 14, 2011 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A fascinating history of the English alphabet, broken down by letter. Sacks tells you who first created the letter (to the best of our knowledge), how it was used and pronounced in its original language, and how it came to be drawn and pronounced as it is today. A wonderful book for nerds. Now being published under an alternate title, Letter Perfect.

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Aug 16, 2008 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Alphabetophiles

Shelves: 2008, language

An amazing an eminently readable history of the Roman alphabet, beginning some 4000 years ago (a millennium earlier than had been believed until very recently). At a stroke I learned why many dictionaries trace our current letter forms to exactly 113 A.D. (sometimes cited as 114 A.D.), and what "SPQR" stands for.

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