Alphabet charts

An alphabet chart is judged on two things, and neither of them is the illustration: the right number of letters, and the right order. It sounds like a low bar. A great deal of alphabet wall art fails it anyway — most visibly the Ukrainian ones, which routinely carry letters borrowed from a different alphabet altogether.

The English sheet has 26 letters, 5 vowels and 21 consonants. The Ukrainian one has 33 letters, 10 vowels, 22 consonants and the soft sign, in the order the letters are actually taught. The Greek alphabet is a different job — 24 letters with their names, both cases, and where science has taken each one.

The first two belong on a nursery or classroom wall, at a child's height. The Greek one belongs above a desk, where alpha, beta and theta turn up in homework and nobody remembers which is which.