Letters

May 2016. Avid Writers club. My mom was its apologetic secretary, keeping us on track with choices and votes. This time the democratically selected topic was ‘letters’.

Dear A.W. Club,

Where would we b without l3tt3rs? I <3 letters, our silent building blocks of notation. I would like to draw your attention to the basics of our craft: letters.

Letters: the essential ingredient for words, with vowels as the super food of letters because you can't even make a word without them. Some letters are particular, like shy ‘Q’ always needs its companion, U. U on the other hand ventures out quite happily on its own. Some letters come with rules like “I before E, except after C”.

Other letters, such as K and P are versatile and alternate between cacophony and silence. Some letters are agreeable, think of R. It goes with almost anything. R is pretty much the little black dress of consonants. W is the crazy uncle of letters, insisting to be called by a word. And, last but not least, Z. Does Z rhyme with bed or flea?

To all would-be parents, don’t even bother of dreaming up unique monikers like S@sk1@. At least in Alberta, letters are mandatory in a name. Some punctuation (“.”, “’”, and “-“) are allowed, but non-letter characters are a no-no. Sorry

(RIP). So save those clever substitutions for your passwords or your pets.

Some letters are words: I and a. And some words sound like letters, but aren't: queue, be(e), why, sea, jay, pea, are, tea, you, ex. I, C, M, V, and X are magical in that these could be letters or numbers. Our brains are forgiving, as evidenced by:

However, “ibhbv aobuibvh aoithat – oiabhaswepr” is utter nonsense. Proving once again, how easy it is to be wrong. In fact, our twenty-six choices are a good lesson, through the straightforward rules of combinations and permutations, that there are far more ways to be wrong than right.

Words are not the only uses of letters. Musical notes, vitamins, units of measure, and the periodic table are all reliant on letters. Science, and especially mathematics, is fond of letters. Letters in formulae (E=MC2, F=MA, y=mx+b, etc), And some letters, such as e and g represent constants. Clearly abbreviations are not words, though our clever brains easily accept the shorthand for mister, missus, doctor, etc.!

And, finally, letters are to writers what pigments are to painters. The combinations are endless and our imaginations are eternally inspired.

Yours, S