Letters listing
Synchronicity: There are letters listing in today’s OCA tax photograph — the U and T of HAIRCUT. And there’s a letter listing in Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy today: a Z that tilts into an N.
The World’s Writing Systems
A beautiful use of the Internet: The World’s Writing Systems.
“Why is this here?”
From xkcd: “Design Notes on the Alphabet.”
x
Thinking alphabet thoughts made me wonder: why do we solve (or fail to solve but maybe at least get partial credit) for x ?
The alphabet and the encyclopedia
Encyclopedias haven’t always been alphabetical. The structure of a medieval encyclopedia was hierarchical, reflecting a divinely ordered universe. Begin with God, then human beings, animals, and on to inanimate things. The change to alphabetical order, Judith Flanders argues, marks a change in worldview.
Meaningful letters
From Judith Flanders’s A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order: omicron, omega, and others.
ABC
On “the preeminence of ABC.” From Judith Flanders’s A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order.