SOUNDS
Alphabets and abjads
Alphabets have letters for consonants and vowels. Abjads write mainly consonants, and they were the first alphabets to develop.
Compare the systemsWriting is not one invention. It is several.
Every script links marks to language, but not in the same way. Some symbols stand for single sounds, some for whole syllables, some for units of meaning. Linguists sort the world's scripts by that one question.
Updated
Compare the systemsTHE SHORT ANSWER
What does
each symbol stand for?
That one question sorts
almost every script in the world.
SYLLABLES
Abugidas and syllabaries
An abugida gives each consonant a built-in vowel and marks other vowels by changing the sign. A syllabary has one symbol per syllable.
How they differ
MEANINGS
Logographic writing
In a logographic system a character stands for a unit of meaning, so thousands of characters are needed. Chinese characters are the main example in use.
See the numbersCOMPARE THE SYSTEMS
How does
each system work?
Pick a type of writing system to see what its symbols stand for, with an example. The bar shows roughly how many distinct symbols that kind of system needs.
Classification as described in the Wikipedia overview of writing systems; most real scripts mix features of more than one type.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Every script
needs a place.
One figure on how many scripts computers now encode,
one on how many characters that takes.
175
Scripts encoded in the Unicode Standard, 2026
Unicode version 1.1 in 1993 encoded 23 scripts. Version 18.0 in 2026 brought the total to 175, from Latin and Han to Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Linear A.
SCRIPTS · UNICODE
172,808
Characters in the Unicode Standard
Unicode 18.0 added 13,007 characters, for a total of 172,808. Unicode 16.0 alone added 3,995 Egyptian Hieroglyphs.
CHARACTERS · UNICODE 18.0
Unicode encodes scripts rather than languages: one script such as Latin can write hundreds of languages, while Japanese mixes Han, Hiragana, Katakana and often Latin.
THREE THINGS TO NOTICE
Spot the system
on a page.
You can often tell what kind of script you are looking at from a few simple clues, even without reading it.
Count the different shapes
A few dozen repeating shapes suggests an alphabet or abjad. Thousands of different characters point to a logographic system.
Look for small vowel marks
Marks attached above, below or beside a base sign often show vowels in an abugida, or optional vowels in an abjad.
Check the direction
Greek and its successors run left to right. Arabic and Hebrew run right to left, and a few scripts, such as ogham, are written from bottom to top.
MIXED SYSTEMS
Most scripts
borrow a little.
In practice, scripts are classed by their main type of symbol, but most mix features. English is written with an alphabet, yet the ampersand and the numerals 0 to 9 stand for words, not sounds.
Alphabetic writing first appeared around 1800 BC to write a Semitic language in the Sinai Peninsula. Most of the world's alphabets descend from that Proto-Sinaitic script or were inspired by it, through Phoenician (about 1050 BC) and Greek (about 800 BC).
Questions
Questions people ask
What is the difference between an alphabet and an abjad?
An alphabet has letters for consonants and vowels. An abjad has letters mainly for consonants, with vowel marks optional. Abjads were the first alphabets to develop and are mostly used for Semitic languages.
What is an abugida?
A script where each consonant sign comes with an inherent vowel, and other vowels are shown by predictable changes to the sign. Nearly all the scripts used in India and Southeast Asia belong to the Brahmic family of abugidas.
Is Korean Hangul an alphabet?
Hangul is often described as a featural system: its symbols represent features of sounds, are combined into letters, and the letters are joined into syllable blocks. It is the only prominent example.
How many writing systems are there?
Counts vary, but the Unicode Standard, which lets computers display text, encodes 175 scripts as of version 18.0 in 2026. A single script can be used for many languages.
Was writing invented only once?
No. Writing was independently invented in only a handful of places in history, and most spoken languages have never been written.
Sources
Where the facts come from
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