alphabetic character
Definition
Noun A single, conventional symbol that is a member of a standardized set (an alphabet) used in writing to represent a basic speech sound, typically a phoneme. It is a fundamental graphical unit of a written language's orthography.
Usage
An "alphabetic character" refers to any individual letter from A to Z (in the English alphabet). It is a formal term often used in computing, linguistics, and typography to distinguish letters from numerical digits, punctuation marks, or other symbols.
Examples
- The password must contain at least one alphabetic character and one number.
- Early writing systems evolved from pictograms to alphabetic characters.
- In the string "Hello123", the 'H', 'e', 'l', and 'o' are alphabetic characters.
Advanced Usage
- The term is used to specify data types in programming (e.g., function in C++ checks if a character is an alphabetic character).
- In formal descriptions, it distinguishes the letters themselves from their phonetic values or their use in words.
Variants and Related Words
- Letter: The most common synonym in everyday language.
- Grapheme: A more technical linguistic term for the smallest functional unit of a writing system.
- Character: A broader term that includes alphabetic characters, digits, punctuation, and other symbols.
Synonyms
- Letter
- Grapheme (in specific linguistic contexts)
Antonyms
- Numeric digit (e.g., 1, 2, 3)
- Punctuation mark (e.g., ., !, ?)
- Special symbol (e.g., @, #, $)
Related Phrases
- Alphanumeric character: A character that is either an alphabetic character or a numeric digit.
- The username can only contain alphanumeric characters.
- Non-alphabetic character: Any character that is not a letter (A-Z, a-z).
- The field rejected the input because it contained a non-alphabetic character.
Noun
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the conventional characters of the alphabet used to represent speech
-
his grandmother taught him his letters
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Khám phá thêm
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