Alphabet
The English alphabet has 26 letters.
Explanation
The English language is used as the standard for mathematical publications. There are no critical marks, and the grammer is not complicated. It can be written on all keyboards. The rules are very flexible and for many words different spelling is allowed.
You can write "programme" or "program", "through" or "thru", etc.
Nevertheless some improvements would help to simplefy it even further. The words "height" and "width" cause confusion by the way it is written.
The word "number" has several meanings. It is formed by digits, but a house number can be 12A and thus may contain letters. In other languages you have different words for this.
New European spelling
It would be a fine example of the European identity if we completely remove unnecessary rules from the various writing languages. That doesn't have to happen all at once, but can take place in a few generations.
HistoryIn 1951, the American mathematician Claude Shannon showed that treating spaces as the 27th letter of the alphabet lowers uncertainty in written language. |