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A review by orielwen
A is for Ox: A Short History of the Alphabet by Lyn Davies
5.0
This is a slight but nevertheless informative book on the history of the development of the modern alphabet as used in English. As always with Folio Society books, it's beautifully presented, with a lovely gold-blocked cloth cover and a slipcase.
The first half of the book gives a general overview of the development of alphabetic languages and lettering in general, focusing in on Europe, while the second half examines the (speculative, in some cases) history of the shape of each letter in the modern English alphabet. There are many illustrations and examples.
The book concludes with a short mention of modern hieroglyphs (road signs and similar pictographs) and the idea that rebus-style text abbreviations might develop into a new modern shared alphabet. Even for a book published in 2006, I'm surprised that there is no mention of emoticons or emoji at this point, but then Lyn Davies's point here is not how a new writing system might evolve but how the borrowing of abbreviations or pictographs into another language now might mirror the way Egyptian hieroglyphs and Phoenician symbols might have been adopted and adapted to serve the needs of other languages.
The first half of the book gives a general overview of the development of alphabetic languages and lettering in general, focusing in on Europe, while the second half examines the (speculative, in some cases) history of the shape of each letter in the modern English alphabet. There are many illustrations and examples.
The book concludes with a short mention of modern hieroglyphs (road signs and similar pictographs) and the idea that rebus-style text abbreviations might develop into a new modern shared alphabet. Even for a book published in 2006, I'm surprised that there is no mention of emoticons or emoji at this point, but then Lyn Davies's point here is not how a new writing system might evolve but how the borrowing of abbreviations or pictographs into another language now might mirror the way Egyptian hieroglyphs and Phoenician symbols might have been adopted and adapted to serve the needs of other languages.