Also by Michael Rosen Selected Poems Fighters for Life: Selected Poems William Shakespeare, In His Time For Our Time Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, illustrated by Quentin Blake The Penguin Book of Childhood ALPHABETICAL How Every Letter Tells a Story Michael Rosen www.johnmurray.co.uk First published in Great Britain in 2013 by John Murray (Publishers) An Hachette UK company Copyright © Michael Rosen 2013 The right of Michael Rosen to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-84854-887-9 John Murray (Publishers) 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH www.johnmurray.co.uk For the three Es, Emma, Elsie and Emile CONTENTS Also by Michael Rosen Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction The Story of A A is for Alphabet The Story of B B is for Battledore The Story of C C is for Ciphers The Story of D D is for Disappeared Letters The Story of E E is for e. e. cummings The Story of F F is for Fonts The Story of G G is for Greek The Story of H H is for H-Aspiration The Story of I I is for Improvisation The Story of J J is for Jokes The Story of K K is for Korean The Story of L L is for LSD The Story of M M is for Music and Memory The Story of N N is for Nonsense The (True) Story of O O is for OK The Story of P P is for Pitman The Story of Q Q is for Qwerty The Story of R R is for Rhyme The Story of S S is for Signs and Sign Systems The Story of T T is for Txtspk The Story of U U is for Umlauts The Story of V V is for Vikings The Story of W W is for Webster The Story of X X Marks the Spot The Story of Y Y is for Yellow The Story of Z Z is for Zipcodes The Oulipo Olympics Acknowledgements Further Reading INTRODUCTION IN FRONT OF me is a line of children and parents who want me to sign their books. As each child comes up to the table I ask their name. For most of the names, I check how it’s spelled. Sometimes this is because it’s one I haven’t heard of, sometimes it’s because there are several ways to spell the name, sometimes it’s because it’s quite possible that the parents have invented a new spelling. So I ask. The child or the parent spells it out for me: ‘S-h-e-r-r-i-l-e-e-n.’ ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Did you come up with that spelling?’ ‘Yes,’ says the mother. ‘Great,’ I say, enjoying the fact that people feel free to take the alphabet into their own hands and use it for their own purposes, making up names, making up spellings, getting the letters that are given to us to do a job that they want done. The next child arrives. I write his name: ‘Tariq’, and have a quiet smile to myself how the rule that the letter ‘q’ must, must, must be accompanied by a ‘u’ and if it’s at the end of a word with a ‘u’ and an ‘e’ is quietly but insistently laid to one side by people with Muslim names. Although we talk of ‘rules’ in language, they are in fact more like treaties between consenting groups. We abide by these until such time as someone or some group thinks that they would like to change things and so a new clause is written into the treaty: people with Muslim names don’t have to do that ‘u’ or ‘u’ plus ‘e’ thing. I write my name in their book: ‘Michael Rosen’, and I look at it, trying to be the child or the parent looking at that name for the first time. Will they notice that the ‘m’ is always asymmetrical; the dot on the ‘i’ is more like an acute accent, pointing up to the top right-hand corner of the page; the ‘r’ is flashily curly; the ‘s’ is decidedly uncurly? Like many people I’m curious about my name, but on occasions when the air in schools is full of talk about ‘phonics’, I look at ‘Michael’ and wonder about the history that enabled the ‘i’ to be ‘long’ and not short like the ‘i’ in ‘pin’. I wonder why the ‘ch’ is there when a ‘k’ would have done the job very well, and indeed some of the children standing in front of me come from places where it is ‘Mikel’. And then, what about that ‘ae’, which I and most English speakers