How the Alphabet developed

Not all writing systems are alphabets. Some are logo-syllabaries, i.e. hieroglyphs.
With hieroglyphs, one symbol stands for one phonetic sound (c. 1750 B.C.).
The Israelites and Phoenicians started to develop a stylized version about 1000 B.C., which later became Modern Hebrew.
Out of this came Archaic Greek, about 750 B.C., and then Modern Greek. Interestingly, the shapes stayed the same, but the pronunciation changed. i.e. »alef« (Hebrew) became »alpha« (Greek) and »bet« (Hebrew) became »beta« (Greek). Therefore the term „Alpha-bet“.
The next stage is Old Italic, about 400 B.C., which had many different versions, as some sounds dropped. The letter shapes from Greek to Old Italic did not change much.
During the Roman Empire, about 1 CE, came Roman Square, which we know today. First, only the capital letters existed. The ancient Romans did not distinguish between an upper case and a lower case and they only had 23 letters, missing j,u and w. Julius Caesars name would habe been written like this: IVLIVS.
Originally, the Romans wrote in both directions, from left to right and from right to left. Eventually, writing left to right became standard.
Roman Cursive developed as an everyday font, which was a faster and easier to write. These letters are already similar to our lower case letters.
Further evolutionary steps where Insular (c. 600 C.E.), Carolingian (c. 1000 C.E.), Blackletter/Gothic (c. 1250 C.E.), Modern Latin Lowercase and Modern Latin Uppercase.

Source: Matt Baker

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