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63-410: " The ABC Song " is the best-known song used to recite the English alphabet in alphabetical order . It is commonly used to teach the alphabet to children in English-speaking countries. "The ABC Song" was first copyrighted in 1835 by Boston music publisher Charles Bradlee. The melody is from a 1761 French music book and is also used in other nursery rhymes like " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star ", while

126-493: A Chronicle of Higher Education blog, Geoffrey Pullum argued that apostrophe is the 27th letter of the alphabet, arguing that it does not function as a form of punctuation . Hyphens are often used in English compound words . Written compound words may be hyphenated, open or closed, so specifics are guided by stylistic policy . Some writers may use a slash in certain instances. The letter most commonly used in English

189-725: A break in a sentence, or to set off an explanatory remark (similar to parenthesis), or to show spans of time or ranges of values. The em dash is sometimes used as a leading character to identify the source of a quoted text. In the early 17th century, in Okes -printed plays of William Shakespeare , dashes are attested that indicate a thinking pause, interruption, mid-speech realization, or change of subject. The dashes are variously longer ⸺ (as in King Lear reprinted 1619) or composed of hyphens --- (as in Othello printed 1622); moreover,

252-514: A clown had exploded. A flock of sparrows – some of them juveniles – alighted and sang. The French and Indian War (1754–1763) was fought in western Pennsylvania and along the present US–Canada border Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. The figure dash ‒ ( U+2012 ‒ FIGURE DASH ) has

315-477: A diaresis as in zoölogist and coöperation . This use of the diaeresis is rare but found in some well-known publications, such as MIT Technology Review and The New Yorker . Some publications, particularly in UK usage, have replaced the diaeresis with a hyphen such as in co-operative. In general, these devices are not used even where they would serve to alleviate some degree of confusion. The apostrophe (ʼ)

378-560: A number of new letters as part of a wider proposal to reform English orthography. Other proposals have gone further, proposing entirely new scripts for written English to replace the Latin alphabet such as the Deseret alphabet and the Shavian alphabet . En Dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but

441-687: A number of non-Latin letters that have since dropped out of use. Some of these either took the names of the equivalent runes , since there were no Latin names to adopt, or were runes themselves ( thorn , wyn ). The most common diacritic marks seen in English publications are the acute (é), grave (è), circumflex (â, î, or ô), tilde (ñ), umlaut and diaeresis (ü or ï—the same symbol is used for two different purposes), and cedilla (ç). Diacritics used for tonal languages may be replaced with tonal numbers or omitted. Diacritic marks mainly appear in loanwords such as naïve and façade . Informal English writing tends to omit diacritics because of their absence from

504-473: A silent letter). Wynn disappeared from English around the 14th century when it was supplanted by uu , which ultimately developed into the modern w . Yogh disappeared around the 15th century and was typically replaced by gh . The letters u and j , as distinct from v and i , were introduced in the 16th century, and w assumed the status of an independent letter. The variant lowercase form long s (ſ) lasted into early modern English , and

567-440: A space in, for example, "11:00 a.m.⁠–⁠1:00 p.m." or "July 9–August 17" . En dashes can be used instead of pairs of commas that mark off a nested clause or phrase. They can also be used around parenthetical expressions – such as this one – rather than the em dashes preferred by some publishers. The en dash can also signify a rhetorical pause. For example, an opinion piece from The Guardian

630-543: A vowel (as in "myth"). Very rarely, W may represent a vowel (as in "cwm", a Welsh loanword). The consonant sounds represented by the letters W and Y in English (/w/ and /j/ as in went /wɛnt/ and yes /jɛs/) are referred to as semi-vowels (or glides ) by linguists, however this is a description that applies to the sounds represented by the letters and not to the letters themselves. The remaining letters are considered consonant letters, since when not silent they generally represent consonants . The English language itself

693-422: Is Set off with num'rous Breaks ⸺and Dashes — Usage varies both within English and within other languages, but the usual conventions for the most common dashes in printed English text are these: Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons—his kitchen looked as if a clown had exploded. A flock of sparrows—some of them juveniles—alighted and sang. Glitter, felt, yarn, and buttons – his kitchen looked as if

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756-404: Is E. The least used letter is Z. The frequencies shown in the table may differ in practice according to the type of text. The letters A, E, I, O, and U are considered vowel letters, since (except when silent) they represent vowels , although I and U represent consonants in words such as "onion" and "quail" respectively. The letter Y sometimes represents a consonant (as in "young") and sometimes

819-661: Is a difference between something named for a parallel/coordinate relationship between two people – for example, Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein  – and something named for a single person who had a compound surname , which may be written with a hyphen or a space but not an en dash – for example, the Lennard-Jones potential [hyphen] is named after one person ( John Lennard-Jones ), as are Bence Jones proteins and Hughlings Jackson syndrome . Copyeditors use dictionaries (general, medical, biographical, and geographical) to confirm

882-441: Is called an em dash because it is one em wide, a length that varies depending on the font size. One em is the same length as the font's height (which is typically measured in points ). So in 9-point type, an em dash is nine points wide, while in 24-point type the em dash is 24 points wide. By comparison, the en dash, with its 1 en width, is in most fonts either a half-em wide or the width of an upper-case "N". The em dash

945-509: Is encoded in Unicode as U+2014 (decimal 8212) and represented in HTML by the named character entity — . The em dash is used in several ways. It is primarily used in places where a set of parentheses or a colon might otherwise be used, and it can also show an abrupt change in thought (or an interruption in speech) or be used where a full stop (period) is too strong and a comma

1008-615: Is entitled: Who is to blame for the sweltering weather? My kids say it's boomers – and me In these situations, en dashes must have a single space on each side. In most uses of en dashes, such as when used in indicating ranges, they are typeset closed up to the adjacent words or numbers. Examples include "the 1914–18   war" or "the Dover–Calais crossing". It is only when en dashes are used in setting off parenthetical expressions – such as this one – that they take spaces around them. For more on

1071-423: Is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline . The most common versions are the en   dash – , generally longer than the hyphen but shorter than the minus sign ; the em   dash — , longer than either the en dash or the minus sign; and the horizontal   bar ― , whose length varies across typefaces but tends to be between those of the en and em dashes. Typical uses of dashes are to mark

1134-484: Is not usually considered part of the English alphabet nor used as a diacritic, even in loanwords. But it is used for two important purposes in written English: to mark the "possessive" and to mark contracted words. Current standards require its use for both purposes. Therefore, apostrophes are necessary to spell many words even in isolation, unlike most punctuation marks, which are concerned with indicating sentence structure and other relationships among multiple words. In

1197-441: Is plausible is a judgment call. AMA style retains the en dashes in the following examples: As discussed above, the en dash is sometimes recommended instead of a hyphen in compound adjectives where neither part of the adjective modifies the other—that is, when each modifies the noun, as in love–hate relationship . The Chicago Manual of Style ( CMOS ), however, limits the use of the en dash to two main purposes: That is,

1260-434: Is preferable to using "a voltage of 50–100 V". Relatedly, in ranges that include negative numbers, "to" is used to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness (for example, "temperatures ranged from −18   °C to −34   °C"). It is also considered poor style (best avoided) to use the en dash in place of the words "to" or "and" in phrases that follow the forms from X to Y and between X and Y . The en dash

1323-511: Is shown below: This version does not have a closing line, and the tune is modified accordingly. The W is not lengthened in this version. Several versions exist covering the alphabet backward, i.e., Z to A. One version is shown below. The e-d-c-b part is as fast as the l-m-n-o part in the normal alphabet song. The same melody used for "The ABC Song" has also been used for the German , French , and Arabic alphabets . A French-language version of

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1386-407: Is sometimes used as a substitute for the minus sign , when the minus sign character is not available since the en dash is usually the same width as a plus sign and is often available when the minus sign is not; see below . For example, the original 8-bit Macintosh Character Set had an en dash, useful for the minus sign, years before Unicode with a dedicated minus sign was available. The hyphen-minus

1449-466: Is too weak (similar to that of a semicolon). Em dashes are also used to set off summaries or definitions. Common uses and definitions are cited below with examples. It may indicate an interpolation stronger than that demarcated by parentheses, as in the following from Nicholson Baker 's The Mezzanine (the degree of difference is subjective). In a related use, it may visually indicate the shift between speakers when they overlap in speech. For example,

1512-420: Is unusual among orthographies used to write the languages of Europe . The names of the letters are commonly spelled out in compound words and initialisms (e.g., tee-shirt, deejay, emcee, okay, etc.), derived forms (e.g., exed out, effing, to eff and blind, aitchless , etc.), and objects named after letters (e.g., en and em in printing, and wye in railroading). The spellings listed below are from

1575-531: Is used to contrast values or illustrate a relationship between two things. Examples of this usage include: A distinction is often made between "simple" attributive compounds (written with a hyphen) and other subtypes (written with an en dash); at least one authority considers name pairs, where the paired elements carry equal weight, as in the Taft–Hartley Act to be "simple", while others consider an en dash appropriate in instances such as these to represent

1638-405: Is usually too narrow to make a typographically acceptable minus sign. However, the en dash cannot be used for a minus sign in programming languages because the syntax usually requires a hyphen-minus. Either the en dash or the em dash may be used as a bullet at the start of each item in a bulleted list. The em dash , em rule , or mutton dash — is longer than an en dash . The character

1701-986: The APA style (named after the American Psychological Association) uses an en dash in ranges, but the AMA style (named after the American Medical Association) uses a hyphen: Some style guides (including the Guide for the Use of the International System of Units ( SI ) and the AMA Manual of Style ) recommend that, when a number range might be misconstrued as subtraction, the word "to" should be used instead of an en dash. For example, "a voltage of 50 V to 100 V"

1764-652: The CMOS favors hyphens in instances where some other guides suggest en dashes, with the 16th edition explaining that "Chicago's sense of the en dash does not extend to between ", to rule out its use in "US–Canadian relations". In these two uses, en dashes normally do not have spaces around them. Some make an exception when they believe avoiding spaces may cause confusion or look odd. For example, compare "12 June – 3 July" with "12 June–3 July" . However, other authorities disagree and state there should be no space between an en dash and adjacent text. These authorities would not use

1827-553: The Oxford English Dictionary . Plurals of consonant names are formed by adding -s (e.g., bees , efs or effs , ems ) or -es in the cases of aitches , esses , exes . Plurals of vowel names also take -es (i.e., aes , ees , ies , oes , ues ), but these are rare. For a letter as a letter, the letter itself is most commonly used, generally in capitalised form, in which case the plural just takes -s or -'s (e.g. Cs or c's for cees ). The names of

1890-440: The end rhymes and the ' L, M, N, O, P " part being an essential part of the song. The television series Sesame Street has covered the song many times, collaborating with popular artists such as Stevie Wonder , Katy Perry , Nina Simone and Usher . Lyrics: (each line represents two measures, or eight beats) Lyrics for the alternate Zed version: (each line represents two measures or eight beats) In American English ,

1953-489: The eponymity (and thus the styling) for specific terms, given that no one can know them all offhand. Preference for an en dash instead of a hyphen in these coordinate/relationship/connection types of terms is a matter of style, not inherent orthographic "correctness"; both are equally "correct", and each is the preferred style in some style guides. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary of

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2016-465: The minuscule y in most handwriting. Y for th can still be seen in pseudo-archaisms such as " Ye Olde Booke Shoppe". The letters þ and ð are still used in present-day Icelandic (where they now represent two separate sounds, /θ/ and /ð/ having become phonemically-distinct – as indeed also happened in Modern English), while ð is still used in present-day Faroese (although only as

2079-470: The syllables of a word: cursed (verb) is pronounced with one syllable, while cursèd ( adjective ) is pronounced with two. For this, è is used widely in poetry, e.g., in Shakespeare's sonnets. J. R. R. Tolkien used ë , as in O wingëd crown . Similarly, while in chicken coop the letters -oo- represent a single vowel sound (a digraph ), they less often represent two which may be marked with

2142-1065: The 19th century (slightly later in American English) used in formal writing for certain words of Greek or Latin origin, such as encyclopædia and cœlom , although such ligatures were not used in either classical Latin or ancient Greek. These are now usually rendered as "ae" and "oe" in all types of writing, although in American English, a lone e has mostly supplanted both (for example, encyclopedia for encyclopaedia , and maneuver for manoeuvre ). Some typefaces used to typeset English texts contain commonly used ligatures, such as for ⟨tt⟩ , ⟨fi⟩ , ⟨fl⟩ , ⟨ffi⟩ , and ⟨ffl⟩ . These are not independent letters – although in traditional typesetting , each of these ligatures would have its own sort (type element) for practical reasons – but simply type design choices created to optimize

2205-616: The Anglo-Saxon futhorc from about the 7th century, although the two continued in parallel for some time. As such, the Old English alphabet began to employ parts of the Roman alphabet in its construction. Futhorc influenced the emerging English alphabet by providing it with the letters thorn (Þ þ) and wynn (Ƿ ƿ). The letter eth (Ð ð) was later devised as a modification of dee (D d), and finally yogh ( Ȝ ȝ )

2268-471: The English Language , the AMA Manual of Style , and Dorland's medical reference works use hyphens, not en dashes, in coordinate terms (such as " blood-brain barrier "), in eponyms (such as " Cheyne-Stokes respiration ", " Kaplan-Meier method "), and so on. In other styles, AP Style or Chicago Style, the en dash is used to describe two closely related entities in a formal manner. In English,

2331-515: The author of the lyrics is unknown. Songs set to the same melody are also used to teach the alphabets of other languages. The melody of "The ABC Song" was first published in the French book of music Les Amusements d'une Heure et Demy ( transl.  Amusements of an Hour and a Half ) (1761) without lyrics. It was adapted in Mozart 's Twelve Variations and used in many nursery rhymes around

2394-479: The choice of em versus en in this context, see En dash versus em dash . When an en dash is unavailable in a particular character encoding environment—as in the ASCII character set—there are some conventional substitutions. Often two consecutive hyphens are the substitute. The en dash is encoded in Unicode as U+2013 (decimal 8211) and represented in HTML by the named character entity – . The en dash

2457-519: The dashes are often, but not always, prefixed by a comma, colon, or semicolon. In 1733, in Jonathan Swift 's On Poetry , the terms break and dash are attested for ⸺ and — marks: Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline; Be mindful, when Invention fails; To scratch your Head, and bite your Nails. Your poem finish'd, next your Care Is needful, to transcribe it fair. In modern Wit all printed Trash,

2520-466: The diacritic. However, diacritics are likely to be retained even in naturalised words where they would otherwise be confused with a common native English word (for example, résumé rather than resume ). Rarely, they may even be added to a loanword for this reason (as in maté , from Spanish yerba mate but following the pattern of café , from French, to distinguish from mate ). Occasionally, especially in older writing, diacritics are used to indicate

2583-434: The dialect in mind by the composer, the letter name for Z is pronounced /ziː/ ( Zee ), but in most other anglophone countries, the letter name is pronounced /zɛd/ ( Zed ). In such dialects, the absent Zee -rhyme is generally not missed, although while singing the song, some children may accommodate for Zee which they would otherwise not use on a regular basis. Variants of the song exist to accommodate Zed . One such variation

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2646-492: The em dash is used this way in Joseph Heller 's Catch-22 : Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, Hold up thy hand, make signal of that hope.— He dies, and makes no sign! This is a quotation dash . It may be distinct from an em dash in its coding (see horizontal bar ). It may be used to indicate turns in a dialogue, in which case each dash starts a paragraph. It replaces other quotation marks and

2709-479: The en dash is usually used instead of a hyphen in compound (phrasal) attributives in which one or both elements is itself a compound, especially when the compound element is an open compound , meaning it is not itself hyphenated. This manner of usage may include such examples as: The disambiguating value of the en dash in these patterns was illustrated by Strunk and White in The Elements of Style with

2772-405: The figure dash glyph. The en dash , en rule , or nut dash – is traditionally half the width of an em dash . In modern fonts, the length of the en dash is not standardized, and the en dash is often more than half the width of the em dash. The widths of en and em dashes have also been specified as being equal to those of the uppercase letters N and M, respectively, and at other times to

2835-517: The following example: When Chattanooga News and Chattanooga Free Press merged, the joint company was inaptly named Chattanooga News-Free Press (using a hyphen), which could be interpreted as meaning that their newspapers were news-free. An exception to the use of en dashes is usually made when prefixing an already- hyphenated compound ; an en dash is generally avoided as a distraction in this case. Examples of this include: An en dash can be retained to avoid ambiguity, but whether any ambiguity

2898-464: The horizontal bar of the plus sign . In informal usage, the hyphen-minus - ( U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS ), provided as standard on most keyboards, is often used instead of the figure dash. In TeX , the standard fonts have no figure dash; however, the digits normally all have the same width as the en dash, so an en dash can be a substitution for the figure dash. In XeLaTeX , one can use \char"2012 . The Linux Libertine font also has

2961-459: The keyboard, while professional copywriters and typesetters tend to include them. As such words become naturalised in English, there is a tendency to drop the diacritics, as has happened with many older borrowings from French, such as hôtel . Words that are still perceived as foreign tend to retain them; for example, the only spelling of soupçon found in English dictionaries (the OED and others) uses

3024-468: The legibility of the text. There have been a number of proposals to extend or replace the basic English alphabet . These include proposals for the addition of letters to the English alphabet, such as eng or engma (Ŋ ŋ), used to replace the digraph " ng " and represent the voiced velar nasal sound with a single letter. Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet , based on the Latin alphabet, introduced

3087-417: The letters are for the most part direct descendants, via French, of the Latin (and Etruscan) names. (See Latin alphabet: Origins .) The regular phonological developments (in rough chronological order) are: The novel forms are aitch , a regular development of Medieval Latin acca ; jay , a new letter presumably vocalised like neighboring kay to avoid confusion with established gee (the other name, jy ,

3150-510: The parallel relationship, as in the McCain–Feingold bill or Bose–Einstein statistics . When an act of the U.S. Congress is named using the surnames of the senator and representative who sponsored it, the hyphen-minus is used in the short title ; thus, the short title of Public Law 111–203 is "The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act", with a hyphen-minus rather than an en dash between "Dodd" and "Frank". However, there

3213-435: The same width as a numerical digit. (Many fonts have digits of equal width. ) It is used within numbers such as the phone number 555‒0199, especially in columns so as to maintain alignment. In contrast, the en dash – ( U+2013 – EN DASH ) is generally used for a range of values. The minus sign − ( U+2212 − MINUS SIGN ) glyph is generally set a little higher, so as to be level with

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3276-628: The song is also taught in Canada, with generally no alterations to the melody except in the final line that requires adjustment to accommodate the two-syllable pronunciation of the French y . English alphabet There are 5 vowel letters and 19 consonant letters—as well as Y and W, which may function as either type. Written English has a large number of digraphs , such as ⟨ch⟩ , ⟨ea⟩ , ⟨oo⟩ , ⟨sh⟩ , and ⟨th⟩ . Diacritics are generally not used to write native English words, which

3339-516: The telephone or a radio communications link. Spelling alphabets such as the ICAO spelling alphabet , used by aircraft pilots, police and others, are designed to eliminate this potential confusion by giving each letter a name that sounds quite different from any other. The ampersand (&) has sometimes appeared at the end of the English alphabet, as in Byrhtferð's list of letters in 1011. &

3402-744: The widths of the lower-case letters. The three main uses of the en dash are: The en dash is commonly used to indicate a closed range of values – a range with clearly defined and finite upper and lower boundaries – roughly signifying what might otherwise be communicated by the word "through" in American English, or "to" in International English. This may include ranges such as those between dates, times, or numbers. Various style guides restrict this range indication style to only parenthetical or tabular matter, requiring "to" or "through" in running text. Preference for hyphen vs. en dash in ranges varies. For example,

3465-413: The world, including " Ah! vous dirai-je, maman ", " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star " and later " Baa, Baa, Black Sheep ", before being used in this song. The author of the lyrics is unknown. "The ABC Song" was first copyrighted in 1835 by Boston music publisher Charles Bradlee under the title "The A.B.C., a German air with variations for the flute with an easy accompaniment for the piano forte." The melody

3528-463: Was attributed to 18th-century composer Louis Le Maire. "The ABC Song" is commonly used in preschools across English-speaking countries. Due to the speed at which ' L, M, N, O, P ' is spoken, it is a common misconception among children still learning the alphabet to believe that it is in fact its own letter called "elemenopee". Some have proposed teaching slower versions of the song to avoid this issue, but attempts to do so have been criticized for lacking

3591-429: Was created by Norman scribes from the insular g in Old English and Irish , and used alongside their Carolingian g . The a-e ligature ash (Æ æ) was adopted as a letter in its own right, named after a futhorc rune æsc . In very early Old English the o-e ligature ethel (Œ œ) also appeared as a distinct letter, likewise named after a rune, œðel . Additionally, the v–v or u-u ligature double-u (W w)

3654-995: Was in use. In the year 1011, a monk named Byrhtferð recorded the traditional order of the Old English alphabet. He listed the 24 letters of the Latin alphabet first, including the ampersand , then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note ond (⁊), an insular symbol for and : In the orthography of Modern English , the letters thorn (þ), eth (ð), wynn (ƿ), yogh ( ȝ ), ash (æ), and ethel (œ) are obsolete. Latin borrowings reintroduced homographs of æ and œ into Middle English and Early Modern English , though they are largely obsolete (see "Ligatures in recent usage" below), and where they are used they are not considered to be separate letters (e.g., for collation purposes), but rather ligatures . Thorn and eth were both replaced by th , though thorn continued in existence for some time, its lowercase form gradually becoming graphically indistinguishable from

3717-472: Was initially written in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc runic alphabet, in use from the 5th century. This alphabet was brought to what is now England, along with the proto-form of the language itself, by Anglo-Saxon settlers. Very few examples of this form of written Old English have survived, mostly as short inscriptions or fragments. The Latin script , introduced by Christian missionaries, began to replace

3780-485: Was preferred by authors such as James Joyce : The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand!" An em dash may be used to indicate omitted letters in a word redacted to an initial or single letter or to fillet a word, by leaving the start and end letters whilst replacing

3843-563: Was regarded as the 27th letter of the English alphabet, as taught to children in the US and elsewhere. An example may be seen in M. B. Moore's 1863 book The Dixie Primer, for the Little Folks . Historically, the figure is a ligature for the letters Et . In English and many other languages, it is used to represent the word and , plus occasionally the Latin word et , as in the abbreviation &c (et cetera). Old and Middle English had

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3906-633: Was taken from French); vee , a new letter named by analogy with the majority; double-u , a new letter, self-explanatory (the name of Latin V was ū ); wye , of obscure origin but with an antecedent in Old French wi ; izzard , from the Romance phrase i zed or i zeto "and Z" said when reciting the alphabet; and zee , an American levelling of zed by analogy with other consonants. Some groups of letters, such as pee and bee , or em and en , are easily confused in speech, especially when heard over

3969-450: Was used in non-final position up to the early 19th century. Today, the English alphabet is considered to consist of the following 26 letters: Written English has a number of digraphs , but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet: Outside of professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use ligatures in loanwords , ligatures are seldom used in modern English. The ligatures æ and œ were until

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