354 EEPOET — 1891. 



phonetic use. We have not, Hke certain Semitic tongues, a 

 triple alphabet, of initial, medial, and terminal forms— a clumsy 

 system, probably devised when it was not customary to space 

 between words, and continued after its original purpose was 

 forgotten, — but we have, in our distinction between capitals 

 and the so-called "small" letters, a purely arbitrary and 

 equally clumsy and unnecessary device. 



I need say nothing of the imperfection of our alphabet, 

 considered as a phonetic system. To represent forty simple 

 sounds, we have an alphabet nominally containing twenty-six 

 signs, though really, as I will show, a much greater number. 

 By overlapping and combining, — by adopting in part the 

 orthography of every known tongue in which the same signs 

 are used, — we have a mass of phonetic symbols which no man 

 can number, and which run into hundreds, if not thousands. 

 Phonetically considered, our twenty-six letters, then, are ex- 

 ceedingly arbitrary signs — far more so than such characters as 

 + and — , which have a fixed and definite meaning. 



I have said that we have more than twenty-six phonetic 

 characters, and that the arbitrary signs outnumber the letters. 

 This is sufficiently proved by a printer's ordinary " body-fount" 

 of type for newspaper- or book- work. Eeduced to its lowest 

 term, including the necessary punctuation-marks, a fount con- 

 tains twenty-nine characters ; or, including the notes of admi- 

 ration and interrogation abhorred by the late Dean Alford, 

 thirty-one. With these, any word, sentence, or collection of 

 sentences in English may be correctly and legibly represented. 

 All outside these may be classed as arbitrary signs. Many 

 founts in actual use by printers contain thirty-four characters, 

 all told. But this scheme shuts out the ten figures, which are 

 certainly arbitrary signs. It makes no provision for parentheses, 

 reference-marks, and the numerous sundries used in ordinary 

 printed text. And it excludes "small " letters, "small capitals," 

 and the large and small italic letters. Hence, an ordinary 

 newspaper- or book-fount, without what are technically called 

 " peculiars," instead of consisting of twenty-nine characters, 

 runs into about four hundred. 



But to the book-printer this is but the beginning. He 

 requires mathematical signs, astronomical signs, fractional 

 marks, "superior" and " inferior" letters and figures, accented 

 letters capital and small, which may easily swell the number 

 to one thousand, or even fifteen hundred. Some of these 

 symbols are rarely used, but, as they have a recognised place, 

 the book-printer must keep them, and the educated reader is 

 expected to understand them. So that, judged by the typo- 

 graphical standard, the arbitrary signs in English work 

 outnumber the purely alphabetical symbols in the proportion 

 of 50 to 1. 



