Institutio Oratoria

As for k my view is that it should not be used at all except in such words as may be indicated by the letter standing alone as an abbreviation. [*](K may stand for Kalendae, Kaeso, Karthago, Kalumnia, Kaput. ) I mention the fact because some hold that k should be used whenever the next letter is an a, despite the existence of the letter c which maintains its force in conjunction with all the vowels. Orthography, however,

is also the servant of usage and therefore undergoes frequent change. I make no mention of the earliest times when our alphabet contained fewer letters [*]( The original alphabet consisted of twenty-one letters, and was increased to twenty-three by the addition of y and z. ) and their shapes differed from those which we now use, while their values also were different. For instance in Greek the letter o was sometimes long and short, as it is with us, and again was sometimes used to express the syllable