The letter J was the last letter added to the modern English alphabet, arriving well after the others.

The longer version

J began as nothing more than a swash: scribes lengthened the letter i when it stood first or last, and in numerals a final j kept a following i from being altered. For centuries the two shapes counted as one letter, and words like Julius and Iulius were the same word spelled two ways.

Italian grammarians of the sixteenth century argued for separating the consonant sound from the vowel, and printers gradually gave each its own slot. That is why the alphabet ends with a trio of late additions, and why classical inscriptions show I where modern editions print J. Dictionaries took a long time to split the entries.

Where this entry sits

This category gathers small surprises about the English language, from odd spelling rules to words that quietly hide their own history. Expect palindromes, punctuation oddities, borrowed terms, and the strange ways writing systems record spoken speech. The full list sits on the Words and Language page, where every entry is listed in order.