How many letters are in the alphabet?

There are 26 letters in the modern English alphabet, from A to Z.

English uses the Latin alphabet, which developed from earlier writing systems including the Greek and Phoenician alphabets. Old English writing originally used a runic system called the futhorc, but the Latin alphabet was adopted from about the 7th century onward. The modern set of 26 letters largely stabilized by the 16th century.

Some letters took time to become separate letters. The letters J and U developed from earlier forms of I and V, while W began as a doubled V or U. Older English also used letters such as thorn (þ), eth (ð), wynn (ƿ), and yogh (ȝ), which later disappeared or were replaced.

A common mix-up is counting sounds instead of letters. English has 26 alphabet letters but far more than 26 speech sounds, and letter combinations such as “sh,” “ch,” and “th” are digraphs, not additional alphabet letters. The alphabet includes five standard vowel letters—A, E, I, O, and U—while W and Y can sometimes act as vowels.