J.D.

From its humble beginnings as a Roman numeral to its eventual tenth position in the English alphabet, J has had quite a linguistic journey. When was J added to the alphabet? J is a bit of a late bloomer; after all, it was the last letter added to the alphabet. It is no coincidence that I and J stand side by side—they actually started out as the same …

While many languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, add specific accents to the letters or characters throughout their alphabet, the English alphabet has only two letters that include a diacritic dot. This mark is added to a letter to signal a change in either the sound or meaning of a character. What is the additional name of this curious dot that hovers over the ninth …