Ae is a letter if you consider a "letter" as a "graphical representative of a distinct sound" like the German "s" represented by the "tailed" B, or the "delta" sign that represents the voiced "th" in welsh. Medieval scribes used the AE ligature for the "aye", which was slightly different in vocalization from the long "i," and it survived into the printed world. ..Malcolm -----Original Message----- From: Philip Hart [mailto:philiph at SLAC.Stanford.EDU] Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 6:08 PM To: Dragaera List Subject: Re: A Brustian quote By the way, wasn't "ae" one letter at some point? In Latin anyway we treated "ae" as a long "i" sound, and I think it was treated as one letter metrically - a dipthong. I seem to recall a typewriter with a merged "ae" though.