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. So wide from the mark is that notion of
a letter, which the popularity of Dr. Lowth and his copyists has made a
hundred-fold more common than any other![67] According to an other
erroneous definition given by these same gentlemen, "_Words_ are articulate
_sounds_, used by common consent, as signs of our ideas."--_Murray's
Gram._, p. 22; _Kirkham's_, 20; _Ingersoll's_, 7; _Alger's_, 12;
_Russell's_, 7; _Merchant's_, 9; _Fisk's_, 11; _Greenleaf's_, 20; and many
others. See _Lowth's Gram._, p. 6; from which almost all authors have taken
the notion, that words consist of "_sounds_" only. But letters are no
principles or parts of _sounds_ at all; unless you will either have visible
marks to be sounds, or the sign to be a principle or part of the thing
signified. Nor are they always principles or parts of _words_: we sometimes
write what is _not a word_; as when, by letters, we denote pronunciation
alone, or imitate brute voices. If words were formed of articulate sounds
only, they could not exist in books, or be in any wise known to the deaf
and dumb. These two primary definitions, then, are both false; and, taken
together, they involve the absurdity of dividing things acknowledged to be
indivisible. In utterance, we cannot divide consonants from their vowels;
on paper, we can. Hence letters are the least parts of written language
only; but the least parts of spoken words are syllables, and not letters.
Every definition of a consonant implies this.

15. They who cannot define a letter or a word, may be expected to err in
explaining other grammatical terms. In my opinion, nothi