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An alphabet typically refers to a writing system in which the elemental speech sounds of a language (phonemes) are represented by a set of graphical units, called letters. An individual member of the set is called a letter.
In common typological classifications, linguists principally differentiate alphabets from other types of writing systems such as syllabaries, where graphical units represent syllables, and logographies, where graphical units represent entire words (or other meaningful, decomposable units of language, called morphemes).
In practice, however, writing systems frequently rely on more than one approach to represent language. For example, modern American English is written using both alphabetic letters and non-alphabetic symbols (e.g., 1, 2 , 3, @, &), many of which can be seen on standard computer keyboards.