English alphabet

The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word alphabet is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. The alphabet originated around the 7th century CE to write Old English from Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current letters:

English alphabet
An English pangram displaying all the characters in context, in FF Dax Regular typeface
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	c.1500 to present
Languages	English
Related scripts
Parent systems	(Proto-writing) Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Old Italic script Latin alphabet English alphabet
Child systems	ISO basic Latin alphabet Cherokee syllabary (in part) Scots alphabet Osage alphabet Saanich writing system Numerous other Latin-based orthographies
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Latn (215), ​Latin
Unicode
Unicode alias	Latin
Unicode range	U+0000 to U+007E Basic Latin and punctuation
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The exact shape of printed letters varies depending on the typeface (and font), and the standard printed form may differ significantly from the shape of handwritten letters (which varies between individuals), especially cursive.

The English alphabet has 5 vowels, 19 consonants, and 2 letters (Y and W) that can function as consonants or vowels.

Written English has a large number of digraphs, such as ch, ea, oo, sh, and th. Within the languages used in Europe, English stands out in not normally using diacritics in native words.