There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. But how did they get there, and why do they look the way they do? Michael Rosen looks for answers in his new book Alphabetical.

Why not change the order in which we teach the alphabet to the QWERTY keyboard layout, Linda Phillips asks (Letters, 29 February). Well, not every language that uses the Latin alphabet uses that ...

Benjamin Franklin’s phonetic alphabet omniglot Benjamin Franklin was many things. Politician, scientist, inventor, printer author, he was a visionary whose ideas helped shape America.

Why is “A” the first letter of our alphabet? Therein lies a “tail.”The ancient Phoenicians, who devised the precursor of our English alphabet about 3,000 years ago, depended heavily on ...