---

• n  a character set that includes letters and is used to write a language
• n  the elementary stages of any subject (usually plural)

• Logically, too, the new alphabet does away with Shaw's own favorite example of the phonetic madness of the present alphabet, the fact that phonetically "ghoti" spells "fish.
• Ever since Plato, scholars have been baffled by a seemingly closed mystery: Where did the alphabet come from? The Greeks thought that the Phoenicians had learned it in Egypt and .
• President Kemal made official use of the ordinary European alphabet in writing Turkish, last week, and announced that this daring innovation will soon be made compulsory .

• rudiment
• first rudiment
• first principle
• ABC
• ABC's
• ABCs

News & Articles

---

• Friday's Broadcast Ratings: "20/20" Surges Week-to-Week in ABC Victory
  The Alphabet's mainstay is up 36% in adults 18-49 from last week.
  June 15, 2013 - The Futon Critic
• Worried About Mass Surveillance? How to Practice Safer Communication
  What is 'Metadata?' Why should you care? by Quinn Norton, Special to ProPublica With all the news coming out about possible mass surveillance and the relationship between an alphabet soup of federal agencies and the companies that hold huge swaths of your electronic life, it's easy to feel powerless. But you're not.… [ Read more ] [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
  June 15, 2013 - Boise Weekly
• The Boxing Alphabet: The Best All-Time Fighters from A to Z
  There are rankings by weight class. There are pound-for-pound rankings. And there are rankings that line up the best fighters in the world from one era to the next. All are worthy endeavors, but, in a quest to add something new and challenging to the conversation, we decided to bring another set of boundaries into play: the alphabet. Using a fighter’s surname as a guide—not necessarily the birth ...
  June 12, 2013 - Bleacher Report

Quotes

---

• Steve Martin in Washington Post
  I'm not sure why I did this. I don't know why an alphabet book popped into my head,Martin says of "The Alphabet From A to Y, With Bonus Letter Z," a collaboration with New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. "My idea was to write these rhyming...
• Michael Irvin in Forbes
  This was worth the wait,Irvin said. "I know my alphabet. When I heard 'H' I was like, 'OK, I (is) next.' So, whew! I was so afraid we were going to skip over the I's."
• Garcia Marquez in International Herald Tribune
  To think that a million people would read something written in the solitude of my room with 28 letters of the alphabet and two fingers as my sole arsenal seems insane,Garcia Marquez said, recalling that the novel's readers have now surpassed...