"z" Was Nearly Kicked Out of the Latin Alphabet Entirely

 

Here's a genuinely unusual chapter in alphabet history: "z" was actually dropped from Latin at one point. Roman grammarians removed it early on since Latin's sound system didn't really need it. It didn't stay gone, though — as more Greek loanwords entered Latin, particularly in scholarly and technical vocabulary, the need for a dedicated "z" sound came back, and the Romans reintroduced the letter specifically to handle it.

That reintroduction is exactly why "z" sits at the very end of the alphabet today. Rather than restoring it to wherever it might have originally been, it got tacked onto the end as a late addition — a placement that's stuck all the way into modern English.

Structurally, "z" is one of the rarer letters in English, which gives type designers a bit more creative room with the angle of its central diagonal stroke compared to a heavily used letter that repeats constantly across a page.

This wraps up our full walkthrough of the lowercase alphabet, from "a" to "z." ✍️ #TypeDesign #Typography #FontDesign

Read more: https://letterhanna.com/lowercase-letter-z-design-and-history/