And, on a more humorous tone (from xkcd):

But do not forget the history of… counting languages. It is not as simple as you would think. Both because it is a daunting task, and because the mere idea of counting those is deeply rooted in history: Tackling the Impossibility—and Necessity—of Counting the World’s Languages.

One of them appears to be well understood even today: The Greek alphabet evolved with technology around the Mediterranean sea.

However, It was clearly preceded by older scripts and some of them have not even been translated as of today. From the Bronze Age in Southern Europe and the “interior sea”, you would find:

• Linear A script: Used by the Minoan civilization in Crete around 1500 BCE to 1200 BCE.

• Linear B script: Used by the Mycenaean civilization in Crete around 1850 BCE to 1450 BCE.

I invite you to follow the links to the World Histroy Encyclopedia, which contain very useful information about all these (and other historical data).

He found two ways to compare some alphabets. One is about grouping them (a bit like in a Venn diagram):

The second is a more hierarchical walk between alphabets.

Both appear quite interesting to my eyes.

• You certainly knew that the alphabet we use (A to Z) has not always existed. You may have suspected that it was evoving in time from older scripts. Matt Baker, from UsefulCharts.com, has a very visual presentation of how our modern latin script may have evolved from proto-sinaitic (over nearly 4 thousand years). I find this properly fascinating. I can’t stop looking at that chart:

• I probably did not know much about the hyphen. This little under-used (or improperly used) sign is the subject of a deep little book (“Hyphen,” by Pardis Mahdavi, which came out in 2021, which I read with passion). But the original article is from the New Yorker: How to Use (or Not Use) a Hyphen.