Runes

Elder Futhark has twenty-four runes and no c, q, v, x or z. That is fine for Proto-Germanic and awkward for English, which is why the rune row used in England grew: the Anglo-Saxon futhorc reached thirty-three characters, adding runes for the sounds Old English actually had.

This uses futhorc. Two of its runes are worth knowing about:

• Thorn, ᚦ, is a single rune for th. It survived into written English long after the runes went, which is why an eighteenth-century sign painter’s ye olde is really the olde - the y is a thorn the printer had no type for.
• Ing, ᛜ, is a single rune for ng.

So THE KING is five runes, not seven.

Three letters futhorc never had - v, x and z - are written with Unicode’s own dedicated runic letters, which keeps every letter distinct and the page reversible.

Examples:

Runes are all straight lines because they were carved. A curve is hard work in wood, and a horizontal stroke would vanish into the grain, so futhorc has neither.