How Many Letters Are In The Alphabet?

Francesca's friend had made her a fun multi-choice quiz, which we completed together today.

My favourite question was, "How many letters are in the alphabet?"

"Hmm," said Francesca, and went off to work it out.



She laboriously wrote out the alphabet, in a mixture of upper- and lower-case letters (some backwards) and carefully wrote the corresponding number underneath each one for a while, until she mercifully forgot about the numbering and continued, unhindered.

Then she started to write all the numbers underneath, until 7, after which she was distracted by an error in the writing of '6' and continued to count by pointing, rather than labelling.

A fascinating process, and she got the right answer.