1.2 Coptic Alphabet: The Coptic alphabet consists of 31 phonetic characters, a special numerical character, and a vowel point. The first 24 characters plus the special numerical character come from the Greek alphabet. The last seven characters are Demotic characters, modified to match the script of the first 24 characters. Pronunciation rules vary for some characters depending on whether they occur in words of Egyptian or Greek origin.

The orthography (or shape of the characters) reflects the way Greek uncial (block) characters were written in the 2nd century A.D. Since then, many of the characters evolved along Egyptian artistic ways, independent of the natural evolution of the Greek characters.