4 ms·

> Here "the alphabet" is assumed to mean the English alphabet. OK: 1. Do we include the ampersand as last letter of the English alphabet? https://en.wikipedia

• jodrellblank 4y ago
  Here, "how many letters" is assumed to be 26. No we don't include all those other things. Meaning, we don't include them in Alphabet books, in Alphabet songs, in the ASCII code ranges between a-z or A-Z. The Wikipedia page for "English Alphabet" starts [1] "The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters". If you ask a random native school-educated English speaker to tell you the alphabet they will most likely tell you 26 letters and will not tell you diacritics that were used in older English writings to indicate the syllables. When you open a standard English dictionary there will be no section for words starting æ or wynn or &. If you put ö and é in a test of alphabet letters you would be marked wrong, even if you were then marked correct for writing "coöperation at the café", even if that's inconsistent. You're nitpicking to try and score ackchually points, but it doesn't matter because everyone knows the English alphabet has 26 letters by some ratio like millions of speakers to 1. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • _dain_ 4y ago
    It matters as soon as you're designing a computer system and reject a person's name for containing diacritics.
    • thfuran 4y ago
      That's because names aren't restricted to strings of English alphabet characters, not because there's any meaningful uncertainty about what characters the modern English alphabet contains.
• Quikinterp 4y ago
  You're posing a lot of questions that are answered with a simple "no". Ask people on the street how many letters are in the English alphabet, and most will tell you 26.
  • deleted 4y ago
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