For it is manifest, that in _no sense_ can we affirm of _each_ of the letters of a word, that it is "_the first principle_" of that word.

Take, for instance, the word _man_.
Is _m_ the first principle of this word?
You may answer, "Yes; for it is the first _letter_." Is _a_ the first principle?
"No; it is the _second_." But _n_ too is a letter; and is _n_ the first principle?
"No; it is the _last_!" This grammatical error might have been avoided by saying, "_Letters_ are the first principles, or least parts, of words." But still the definition would not be true, nor would it answer the question, What is a letter?
The true answer to which is: "A letter is an alphabetic _character_, which commonly represents some elementary sound of human articulation, or speech." 14.

This true definition sufficiently distinguishes letters from the marks used in punctuation, because the latter are not alphabetic, and they represent silence, rather than sound; and also from the Arabic figures used for numbers, because these are no part of any alphabet, and they represent certain entire words, no one of which consists only of one letter, or of a single element of articulation.
The same may be said of all the characters used for abbreviation; as, & for _and_, $ for _dollars_, or the marks peculiar to mathematicians, to astronomers, to druggists, &c.

None of these are alphabetic, and they represent significant words, and not single elementary sounds: it would be great dullness, to assume that a word and an elementary sound are one and the same thing.

But the reader will observe that this definition embraces _no idea_ contained in the faulty one to which I am objecting; neither indeed could it, without a blunder.