English alphabet 24 letters of the Latin alphabet first (including ampersand), then 5 additional English letters, starting with the Tironian note "ond" (⁊), an insular symbol for "and": In the orthography of Modern English, thorn (þ), eth (ð), wynn (ƿ), yogh (), ash (æ), and ethel (œ) are obsolete. Latin borrowings reintroduced homographs of ash and ethel into Middle English and Early Modern English, though they are largely obsolete (see "Ligatures in recent usage" below), and where they are used they are not considered to be separate letters (e.g. for collation purposes), but rather ligatures. Thorn and eth were both replaced by
English alphabet "i", were introduced in the 16th century, and "w" assumed the status of an independent letter. The variant lowercase form long s (ſ) lasted into early modern English, and was used in non-final position up to the early 19th century. Today, the English alphabet is now considered to consist of the following 26 letters: Written English has a number of digraphs, but they are not considered separate letters of the alphabet: Outside of professional papers on specific subjects that traditionally use ligatures in loanwords, ligatures are seldom used in modern English. The ligatures "æ" and "œ" were until the 19th