1 Spam Chapter

12-Step Guide On How To Prevent Emails From Going To Spam | Coherent Path

March 19, 2018

ecommerce

The Easy, 12-Step Guide On How To Prevent Emails From Going To Spam

Written by Franco Varriano.

I'm sure you've run into the frustrating question "why are my emails going to spam?". Well don't worry - we are here with our 12 step guide to explain how to stop your emails from going to spam with some tips & tricks on how to avoid spam filters.

It would be a shame for all the hard work you put into crafting your emails to go to waste, but that's exactly what happens when your email ends up in a subscriber's spam folder. In fact, a report from Return Path reveals that spam filters are more rigorous than ever, with one in five emails failing to reach the inbox.

When you're putting together an email marketing campaign, statistics like this are alarming. But don't worry--we've got your back. We don't want your emails to be just another statistic, and we've written the following guide to help you keep your emails out of the junk folder and in your recipient's inbox where they belong. So without further ado, here are the 12 things you must do to prevent emails from winding up in spam.

1. Ask Subscribers to Whitelist Your Email Address

Whitelisting an email address in Gmail.

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! all work hard to ensure that their email program spam filters don't catch emails that come from people in your contacts. These companies (rightly) assume that if an email is from someone in your contacts, it's not spam.

To ensure that your emails get this privileged treatment, ask your subscribers to whitelist your emails by adding your "From" address to their contacts or list of safe senders. We recommend including instructions and screenshots illustrating how to do this, as you should not assume that all of your subscribers have the technical proficiency to whitelist emails.

To ensure that all your emails get this treatment, include the whitelisting instructions in the first welcome email you send when someone joins your email list.

2. Always Get Permission to Send Emails

Nothing will get your emails flagged as spam faster than sending an email without permission. Just think about what you do when you get an email from an unknown sender. Assuming the email even makes it through your email service's spam filter, you're going to mark it as spam without even opening it.

Sending people marketing emails without their permission is not a recipe for business success in the long-term. If you want to convince subscribers to buy from you, you want them to be engaged and interested. Random email recipients are neither; they're indifferent at best and more likely annoyed to get an email from someone they don't know. Always get permission before sending an email; it's the best practice both ethically and financially.

3. Follow the Laws Governing Email Marketing

Speaking of ethics, you need to be aware of the laws that govern digital marketing communications. In particular, you should be familiar with the CAN-SPAM Act, which outlines the practices you must use when sending commercial emails.

You don't need to read every line of the law, but you should know that there are harsh penalties for sending spam emails. How do you know if an email is (legally) spam? The CAN-SPAM Act defines spam email as any message which you:

Send without the recipient's permission.

Send without including a mailing address.

Send with a deceptive subject line.

Send without including a way for recipients to opt-out.

You don't need to be too worried about the above, since all modern email marketing programs ensure that you comply with the mailing address and opt-outs by default. But you should be careful about your subject lines, which we'll explore in more detail later in this post.

4. Use a Reputable Email Marketing Program

One sign that spam filters keep a look out for when trying to catch messages is to look at the IP address associated with the sending email address and see if there are any spam complaints associated with it. If there are, then legitimate email addresses can get flagged simply due to association.

To make sure this doesn't happen to your emails, always use a reputable email provider. All the top providers take steps to prevent spammers from using their platforms, which helps ensure that the malicious actions of spammers don't hurt the deliverability of your emails.

Furthermore, as we already mentioned, the best email marketing software providers will also have features built in to help you avoid other common spam triggers such as not including a physical address or using a sending email address that looks suspicious.

5. Proofread Your Emails

If your emails sound like they were written hastily (or by a computer), that can be a red flag for spam filters. If a typo slips into your emails occasionally, that's not going to cause you any serious trouble. But if your emails are riddled with typos, grammatical errors, and sentences that just sound...off, then there's the risk that spam filters will stop them.

For example, have a look at this real phishing email:

While you're not going to write an email with problems this extreme, it does offer valuable lessons about how typos, poor formatting, and bad grammar are all hallmarks of spam emails. If you're not comfortable with your grammar abilities, then find someone you trust to proofread your emails for you, or at least use a program such as Grammarly to catch basic grammar errors.

6. Don't Write Spammy Subject Lines

While in the past there were specific lists of "spam trigger words" to avoid in your marketing emails, spam filters are now much more sophisticated. Therefore, instead of focusing on specific words to avoid, it's best to think more holistically and ensure that you don't write subject lines that sound like spam.

For an example of spammy subject lines, have a look at the following screenshot taken from a real Gmail Spam folder.

As you can see, some of these emails are from legitimate brands like Lyft, Dollar Shave Club, and FareDepot. However, due to the wording the email marketers at these companies chose, the emails have ended up in spam. Note how many of these emails make references to money, use too many exclamation points, or generally promise discounts.

Does this mean you should never send emails with subject lines offering discounts or deals? Of course not, but it does show that you should be careful with these sorts of subject lines. For more information, you can review our guide to email subject line best practices.

7. Purge Abandoned Email Addresses from Your List

One metric that spam filters use to catch errant emails is to look at how many of the emails to which you are sending are active. If the percentage is too low, then that can be a sign that you're sending spam email content.

To ensure this doesn't happen, you should regularly remove addresses associated with email accounts that don't appear to be active. If someone hasn't opened your emails in a long time, then it's probably safe to remove them from your list. You can think of this like pruning a tree. You cut away small bits now in order to ensure the overall continued health of the organism.

Of course, this advice only applies if a small number of your subscribers aren't engaging with your content. If you have low email open rates overall, then you may need to rethink your overall email marketing strategy, as this could indicate a deeper issue than just a few inactive email addresses.

8. Use a Spam-Checking Tool

Wouldn't it be great if there were a program that would just tell you if your emails were likely to get caught by spam filters or if they're still even valid at all? As it turns out, such applications exist.

One of our favorites is called Emailable. Simply send your email to their provided email address in order to automatically receive a report on how likely your email is to go to a recipient's spam folder.

9. Have a Clear Sender Address

Your sender address is what appears in the "From" field when someone looks at your email. If you have a sender address full of random characters or that just sounds suspicious, you run the risk of your email getting flagged as spam.

For this reason, we recommend avoiding sender addresses that contain lots of numbers or gibberish. Stick to either a person's name or your company name. Not only is this helpful for keeping you out of spam, but it's also more personal than a string of random characters, which people have come to associate with automatic emails, not compelling, personalized offers.

10. Email Your Subscribers Regularly

If you only send an email every couple of months, then you risk subscribers forgetting who you are or why they subscribed. If this happens, they may unsubscribe or even mark your email as spam when they do finally hear from you.

To prevent this, stay in regular contact with your subscribers. Of course, you should always provide value when you send an email; don't just email subscribers with a certain frequency because it's "best practice" to do so.

Rather, look for opportunities to provide value to your subscribers as often as you can. If that's just once a week, that's okay, so long as you consistently email them each week (and use smart timing to make sure they get the emails when they're most likely to open them).

11. Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

Making it easy for your subscribers to leave your email list might seem like a counterintuitive suggestion, but it's key to both complying with the CAN-SPAM Act and ensuring that subscribers trust you. While complying with the law is your foremost priority, including a way to unsubscribe also shows subscribers that you have confidence in the value of your content. After all, if you don't think that your emails are excellent, why would you send them to begin with?

How easy you make it to unsubscribe is up to you. Some brands take the confidence approach to the extreme, placing an unsubscribe button in the header as well as the footer of their emails. While you can do this, there's also the risk that people will either unsubscribe without reading the email or hit the button by mistake if you place it in the header.

Therefore, we think that a standard unobtrusive unsubscribe button in the email footer is the way to go for most ecommerce entrepreneurs. See the above screenshot from a Stack Overflow email for an example of this, and remember that your email marketing software will already have this feature built into its templates.

12. Be Honest

We already mentioned how the CAN-SPAM Act forbids sending deceptive emails, but the point warrants further exploration. Above all, you should always be honest in your email marketing. Don't write subject lines that trick people into opening your messages.

Specifically, don't write things that make emails look like they're from a person's employer, subject lines that are threatening or alarming, or email addresses that appear to be from someone they're not. Resorting to cheap tricks like these is not the way to run a business. Instead, focus on how you can create value for your subscribers. When you give them a great offer, the money will take care of itself.

We hope you now understand what causes emails to end up in spam, as well as what you can do to keep them from going there. As long as you follow the best practices we've outlined above, you can rest confident that the emails you send will wind up in your subscribers' inboxes, and not buried in the junk mail folder.

12-Step Guide On How To Prevent Emails From Going To Spam | Coherent Path

March 19, 2018

ecommerce

The Easy, 12-Step Guide On How To Prevent Emails From Going To Spam

Written by Franco Varriano.

1. Ask Subscribers to Whitelist Your Email Address

Whitelisting an email address in Gmail.

To ensure that all your emails get this treatment, include the whitelisting instructions in the first welcome email you send when someone joins your email list.

2. Always Get Permission to Send Emails

3. Follow the Laws Governing Email Marketing

Send without the recipient's permission.

Send without including a mailing address.

Send with a deceptive subject line.

Send without including a way for recipients to opt-out.

4. Use a Reputable Email Marketing Program

9. Have a Clear Sender Address

10. Email Your Subscribers Regularly

11. Make it Easy to Unsubscribe

12. Be Honest

The Paleo-Hebrew script (Hebrew: הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Hebrew Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script, as the Talmud stated that the Hebrew ancient script was still used by the Samaritans.[1] The Talmud described it as the "Libona'a script" (Hebrew: ליבונאה), translated by some as "Lebanon script".[2] Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum, who argued that "[t]o apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable".[3]

The first Paleo-Hebrew inscription identified in modern times was the Shebna inscription, found in 1870, and then referred to as "two large ancient Hebrew inscriptions in Phoenician letters".[4][5] Fewer than 2,000 inscriptions are known today, of which the vast majority comprise just a single letter or word.[6][7] The earliest known examples of Paleo-Hebrew writing date to the 10th century BCE.[8][9][10]

Like the Phoenician alphabet, it is a slight regional variant and an immediate continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script, which was used throughout Canaan in the Late Bronze Age.[11] Phoenician, Hebrew, and all of their sister Canaanite languages were largely indistinguishable dialects before that time.[12][13] The Paleo-Hebrew script is an abjad of 22 consonantal letters, exactly as the other Canaanite scripts from the period.

By the 5th century BCE, among Judeans the alphabet had been mostly replaced by the Aramaic alphabet as officially used in the Persian empire (which, like all alphabetical writing systems, was itself ultimately a descendant of the Proto-Canaanite script, though through intermediary non-Israelite stages of evolution)[citation needed]. The "Jewish square-script" variant now known simply as the Hebrew alphabet evolved directly out of the Aramaic script by about the 3rd century BCE (although some letter shapes did not become standard until the 1st century CE). By contrast, the Samaritan alphabet, as used by Samaritans, is an immediate continuation of the Proto-Hebrew script without intermediate non-Israelite evolutionary stages[citation needed]. There is also some continued use of the old Hebrew script in Jewish religious contexts down to the 1st century BCE, notably in the Paleo-Leviticus text found in the Dead Sea scrolls.[citation needed]

Contents

1History1.1Origins

1.2Use in the Israelite kingdoms

1.3Decline and late survival

2Legacy2.1Samaritan alphabet

2.2Babylonian Talmud

2.3Contemporary use

2.4Archaeology

3Table of letters

4Unicode

5See also

6References

7Further reading

8External links

History[edit]

Origins[edit]

Photograph of section of the Zayit Stone, 10th century BCE: (right-to-left) the letters waw, he, het, zayin, tet

Paleo-Hebrew signet ring discovered in Jerusalem's City of David. City of David Archive, Eliyahu Yannai

Main articles: Phoenician alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic alphabet

The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets developed in the wake of the Bronze Age collapse, out of their immediate predecessor script Proto-Canaanite (Late Proto-Sinaitic) during the 13th to 12th centuries BCE, and earlier Proto-Sinaitic scripts.

Gezer calendar

The earliest known inscription in the Paleo-Hebrew script is the Zayit Stone discovered on a wall at Tel Zayit, in the Beth Guvrin Valley in the lowlands of ancient Judea in 2005, about 50 km (31 mi) southwest of Jerusalem. The 22 letters were carved on one side of the 38 lb (17 kg) stone, which resembles a bowl on the other. The find is attributed to the mid-10th century BCE. The so-called Ophel inscription is of a similar age, but difficult to interpret, and may be classified as either Proto-Canaanite or as Paleo-Hebrew. The Gezer calendar is of uncertain date, but may also still date to the 10th century BCE.

The script on the Zayit Stone and Gezer Calendar are an earlier form than the classical Paleo-Hebrew of the 8th century and later; this early script is almost identical to the early Phoenician script on the 9th-century Ahiram sarcophagus inscription. By the 8th century, a number of regional characteristics begin to separate the script into a number of national alphabets, including the Israelite (Israel and Judah), Moabite (Moab and Ammon), Edomite, Phoenician and Old Aramaic scripts.

Linguistic features of the Moabite language (rather than generic Northwest Semitic) are visible in the Mesha Stele inscription, commissioned around 840 BCE by King Mesha of Moab. Similarly, the Tel Dan Stele, dated approximately 810 BCE, is written in Old Aramaic, dating from a period when Dan had already fallen into the orbit of Damascus.

Drawing of the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

The oldest inscriptions identifiable as Biblical Hebrew have long been limited to the 8th century BCE. In 2008, however, a potsherd (ostracon) bearing an inscription was excavated at Khirbet Qeiyafa which has since been interpreted as representing a recognizably Hebrew inscription dated to as early as the 10th century BCE. The argument identifying the text as Hebrew relies on the use of vocabulary.[14]

From the 8th century onward, Hebrew epigraphy becomes more common, showing the gradual spread of literacy among the people of the Kingdom of Israel and the Kingdom of Judah; the oldest portions of the Hebrew Bible, although transmitted via the recension of the Second Temple period, are also dated to the 8th century BCE.

Use in the Israelite kingdoms[edit]

Illustration of script on one of the Ketef Hinnom scrolls, circa 700 BCE—the "Silver Scroll"

The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was in common use in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah throughout the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. During the 6th century BCE, the time of the Babylonian exile, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was gradually replaced by the use of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. The letters of Imperial Aramaic were again given shapes characteristic for writing Hebrew during the Second Temple period, developing into the "square shape" of the Hebrew alphabet.[15]

The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use their variant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, called the Samaritan script.[16] After the fall of the Persian Empire, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form.

The Paleo-Hebrew script evolved by developing numerous cursive features, the lapidary features of the Phoenician alphabet being ever less pronounced with the passage of time. The aversion of the lapidary script may indicate that the custom of erecting stelae by the kings and offering votive inscriptions to the deity was not widespread in Israel. Even the engraved inscriptions from the 8th century exhibit elements of the cursive style, such as the shading, which is a natural feature of pen-and-ink writing. Examples of such inscriptions include the Siloam inscription,[17] numerous tomb inscriptions from Jerusalem,[18][19] the Ketef Hinnom scrolls, a fragmentary Hebrew inscription on an ivory which was taken as war spoils (probably from Samaria) to Nimrud, the Arad ostraca dating to the 6th-century BCE, the hundreds of 8th to 6th-century Hebrew seals from various sites, and the Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll discovered near Tel Qumran. The most developed cursive script is found on the 18 Lachish ostraca,[20] letters sent by an officer to the governor of Lachish just before the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. A slightly earlier (circa 620 BCE) but similar script is found on an ostracon excavated at Mesad Hashavyahu, containing a petition for redress of grievances (an appeal by a field worker to the fortress's governor regarding the confiscation of his cloak, which the writer considers to have been unjust).[21][22]

Decline and late survival[edit]

Coin from the Bar Kokhba revolt with the Paleo-Hebrew writings. The letters are 𐤇𐤓𐤅𐤕 𐤋𐤉𐤓𐤅𐤔𐤋𐤌 on one side and 𐤔𐤌𐤏𐤍 on the other, meaning 'freedom to Jerusalem' and the name 'Shimon' (חרות לירושל[י]ם and שמע[ו]ן in modern Hebrew).

The word "Hebrew" (עברית ʿbryt, modern Hebrew: Ivrit) written in the modern Hebrew alphabet (top), and in Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (bottom)

Further information: History of the Hebrew alphabet

After the Babylonian capture of Judea, when most of the nobles were taken into exile, the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet continued to be used by the people who remained. One example of such writings are the 6th-century BCE jar handles from Gibeon, on which the names of winegrowers are inscribed. Beginning from the 5th century BCE onward, the Aramaic language and script became an official means of communication. Paleo-Hebrew was still used by scribes and others.

The Paleo-Hebrew script was retained for some time as an archaizing or conservative mode of writing. It is found in certain texts of the Torah among the Dead Sea Scrolls, dated to the 2nd to 1st centuries BCE: manuscripts 4Q12, 6Q1: Genesis. 4Q22: Exodus. 1Q3, 2Q5, 4Q11, 4Q45, 4Q46, 6Q2, and the Leviticus scroll (11QpaleoLev).[23] In some Qumran documents, the tetragrammaton name of the Israelite deity, YHWH, is written in Paleo-Hebrew while the rest of the text is rendered in the adopted Aramaic square script that became today's normative Jewish Hebrew script.[24] The vast majority of the Hasmonean coinage, as well as the coins of the First Jewish–Roman War and Bar Kokhba's revolt, bears Paleo-Hebrew legends. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet fell completely out of use among Jews only after 135 CE.

Legacy[edit]

Samaritan alphabet[edit]

Main article: Samaritan alphabet

A page from the Samaritan version of Leviticus

The paleo-Hebrew alphabet continued to be used by the Samaritans and over time developed into the Samaritan alphabet. The Samaritans have continued to use the script for writing both Hebrew and Aramaic texts until the present day. A comparison of the earliest Samaritan inscriptions and the medieval and modern Samaritan manuscripts clearly indicates that the Samaritan script is a static script which was used mainly as a book hand.

Babylonian Talmud[edit]

The Talmudic sages did not share a uniform stance on the subject of Paleo-Hebrew. Some stated that Paleo-Hebrew was the original script used by the Israelites at the time of the Exodus,[25] while others believed that Paleo-Hebrew merely served as a stopgap in a time when the ostensibly original script the (Assyrian Script) was lost.[26] According to both opinions, Ezra the Scribe (c. 500 BCE) introduced, or reintroduced the Assyrian script to be used as the primary alphabet for the Hebrew language.[25] The arguments given for both opinions are rooted in Jewish scripture and/or tradition.

A third opinion[27] in the Talmud states that the script never changed altogether. It would seem that the sage who expressed this opinion did not believe that Paleo-Hebrew ever existed, despite the strong arguments supporting it. His stance is rooted in a scriptural verse,[28] which makes reference to the shape of the letter vav. The sage argues further that, given the commandment to copy a Torah scroll directly from another, the script could not conceivably have been modified at any point. This third opinion was accepted by some early Jewish scholars,[29] and rejected by others, partially because it was permitted to write the Torah in Greek.[30]

Contemporary use[edit]

YHD (𐤉𐤄𐤃), for Yehud, written in Paleo-Hebrew on the 1 New Shekel coin (1986)

Use of Proto-Hebrew in modern Israel is negligible, but it is found occasionally in nostalgic or pseudo-archaic examples, e.g. on the ₪1 coin (𐤉𐤄𐤃 "Judea")[31] and in the logo of the Israeli town Nahariyah (Deuteronomy 33:24 𐤁𐤓𐤅𐤊 𐤌𐤁𐤍𐤉𐤌 𐤀𐤔𐤓 "Let Asher be blessed with children").

Archaeology[edit]

In 2019, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) unearthed a 2,600 year-old seal impression, while conducting excavations at the City of David, containing paleo-Hebrew script, and which is thought to have belonged to a certain "Nathan-Melech," an official in King Josiah's court.[32]

Table of letters[edit]

This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

Main article: Phoenician alphabet § Table of letters

Phoenician or Paleo-Hebrew characters were never standardised and are found in numerous variant shapes. A general tendency of more cursive writing can be observed over the period of c. 800 BCE to 600 BCE. After 500 BCE, it is common to distinguish the script variants by names such as "Samaritan", "Aramaic", etc.

There is no difference in "Paleo-Hebrew" vs. "Phoenician" letter shapes. The names are applied depending on the language of the inscription, or if that cannot be determined, of the coastal (Phoenician) vs. highland (Hebrew) association (c.f. the Zayit Stone abecedary).

Letter

Name[33]

Meaning

Phoneme

Origin

Corresponding letter in

Image

Text

Samaritan

Hebrew

𐤀‎

ʾālep

head of cattle (אלף)

ʾ [ʔ]

𓃾

ࠀ‎

𐤁‎

bēt

house (בית)

b [b]

𓉐

ࠁ‎

𐤂‎

gīml

throwing stick (?)

g [ɡ]

𓌙

ࠂ‎

𐤃‎

dālet

door (דלת)

d [d]

𓇯

ࠃ‎

𐤄‎

hē

jubilation/window[34]

h [h]

𓀠?

ࠄ‎

𐤅‎

wāw

hook (וו)

w [w]

𓏲

ࠅ‎

𐤆‎

zayin

weapon (זין)

z [z]

𓏭

ࠆ‎

𐤇‎

ḥēt(?)

courtyard/thread[34]

ḥ [ħ]

𓉗/𓈈?

ࠇ‎

𐤈‎

ṭēt

wheel (?)[35]

ṭ [tˤ]

ࠈ‎

𐤉‎

yōd

arm, hand (יד)

y [j]

𓂝

ࠉ‎

𐤊‎

kāp

palm of a hand (כף)

k [k]

𓂧

ࠊ‎

כ, ך

𐤋‎

lāmed

goad (למד)[36]

l [l]

𓌅

ࠋ‎

𐤌‎

mēm

water (מים)

m [m]

𓈖

ࠌ‎

מ, ם

𐤍‎

nūn

fish (נון)[37]

n [n]

𓆓

ࠍ‎

נ, ן

𐤎‎

sāmek

pillar, support (סמך)[38]

s [s]

𓊽

ࠎ‎

𐤏‎

ʿayin

eye (עין)

ʿ [ʕ]

𓁹

ࠏ‎

𐤐‎

pē

mouth (פה)

p [p]

𓂋

ࠐ‎

פ, ף

𐤑‎

ṣādē

?[39]

ṣ [sˤ]

ࠑ‎

צ, ץ

𐤒‎

qōp

?[40]

q [q]

ࠒ‎

𐤓‎

rēš

head (ריש)

r [r]

𓁶

ࠓ‎

𐤔‎

šīn

tooth (שין)

š [ʃ]

𓌓

ࠔ‎

𐤕‎

tāw

mark, sign (תו)

t [t]

𓏴

ࠕ‎

Unicode[edit]

The Unicode block Phoenician (U+10900–U+1091F) is intended for the representation of, apart from the Phoenician alphabet, text in Palaeo-Hebrew, Archaic Phoenician, Early Aramaic, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyri, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and Punic.

The Siloam inscription

Phoenician[1][2]

Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

U+1090x

𐤀‎

𐤁‎

𐤂‎

𐤃‎

𐤄‎

𐤅‎

𐤆‎

𐤇‎

𐤈‎

𐤉‎

𐤊‎

𐤋‎

𐤌‎

𐤍‎

𐤎‎

𐤏‎

U+1091x

𐤐‎

𐤑‎

𐤒‎

𐤓‎

𐤔‎

𐤕‎

𐤖‎

𐤗‎

𐤘‎

𐤙‎

𐤚‎

𐤛‎

𐤟‎

Notes1.^ As of Unicode version 14.0

2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

See also[edit]

Asia portal

Judaism portal

Israel portal

Writing portal

Ancient Hebrew writings

Ancient North Arabian

Biblical Hebrew orthography

History of the Hebrew alphabet

Proto-Canaanite alphabet

References[edit]

^ Sanhedrin (tractate) 21b: "אמר מר זוטרא ואיתימא מר עוקבא בתחלה ניתנה תורה לישראל בכתב עברי ולשון הקודש חזרה וניתנה להם בימי עזרא בכתב אשורית ולשון ארמי ביררו להן לישראל כתב אשורית ולשון הקודש והניחו להדיוטות כתב עברית ולשון ארמי. מאן הדיוטות אמר רב חסדא כותאי מאי כתב עברית אמר רב חסדא כתב ליבונאה" (translated: "Mar Zutra says, and some say that it is Mar Ukva who says: Initially, the Torah was given to the Jewish people in Ivrit script, the original form of the written language, and the sacred tongue, Hebrew. It was given to them again in the days of Ezra in Ashurit script and the Aramaic tongue. The Jewish people selected Ashurit script and the sacred tongue for the Torah scroll and left Ivrit script and the Aramaic tongue for the commoners. Who are these commoners? Rav Chisda said: The Samaritans [Kutim]. What is Ivrit script? Rav Chisda says: Lebanon script.")

^ This name is most likely derived from Lubban, i.e. the script is called "Libanian" (of Lebanon), although it has also been suggested that the name is a corrupted form of "Neapolitan", i.e. of Nablus. James A. Montgomery, The Samaritans, the earliest Jewish sect (1907), p. 283.

^ The Hebrew scripts, Volume 2, Salomo A. Birnbaum, Palaeographia, 1954, "To apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable. I have therefore coined the term Palaeo-Hebrew."

^ Avigad, N. (1953). The Epitaph of a Royal Steward from Siloam Village. Israel Exploration Journal, 3(3), 137–152: "The inscription discussed here is, in the words of its discoverer, the first 'authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah', for it was discovered ten years before the Siloam tunnel inscription. Now, after its decipherment, we may add that it is (after the Moabite Stone and the Siloam tunnel inscription) the third longest monumental inscription in Hebrew and the first known text of a Hebrew sepulchral inscription from the pre-Exilic period."

^ Clermont-Ganneau, 1899, Archaeological Researches In Palestine 1873–1874, Vol 1, p. 305: "The most important of these discoveries is certainly that which I had the good fortune to make of two large ancient Hebrew inscriptions in Phoenician letters... I may observe, by the way, that the discovery of these two texts was made long before that of the inscription in the tunnel, and therefore, though people in general do not seem to recognise this fact, it was the first which enabled us to behold an authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah."

^ Millard, A. (1993), Reviewed Work: Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions. Corpus and Concordance by G. I. Davies, M. N. A. Bockmuehl, D. R. de Lacey, A. J. Poulter, The Journal of Theological Studies, 44(1), new series, 216–219: "...every identifiable Hebrew inscription dated before 200 BC... First ostraca, graffiti, and marks are grouped by provenance. This section contains more than five hundred items, over half of them ink-written ostraca, individual letters, receipts, memoranda, and writing exercises. The other inscriptions are names scratched on pots, scribbles of various sorts, which include couplets on the walls of tombs near Hebron, and letters serving as fitters' marks on ivories from Samaria.... The seals and seal impressions are set in the numerical sequence of Diringer and Vattioni (100.001–100.438). The pace of discovery since F. Vattioni issued his last valuable list (Ί sigilli ebraici III', AnnaliAnnali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientate di Napoli 38 (1978), 227—54) means the last seal entered by Davies is 100.900. The actual number of Hebrew seals and impressions is less than 900 because of the omission of those identified as non-Hebrew which previous lists counted. A further reduction follows when duplicate seal impressions from different sites are combined, as cross references in the entries suggest... The Corpus ends with 'Royal Stamps' (105.001-025, the Imlk stamps), '"Judah" and "Jerusalem" Stamps and Coins' (106.001-052), 'Other Official Stamps' (107.001), 'Inscribed Weights' (108.001-056) and 'Inscribed Measures' (109.001,002).... most seals have no known provenance (they probably come from burials)... Even if the 900 seals are reduced by as much as one third, 600 seals is still a very high total for the small states of Israel and Judah, and most come from Judah. It is about double the number of seals known inscribed in Aramaic, a language written over a far wider area by officials of great empires as well as by private persons.

^ Graham I. Davies; J. K. Aitken (2004). Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance. Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0-521-82999-1. This sequel to my Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions includes mainly inscriptions (about 750 of them) which have been published in the past ten years. The aim has been to cover all publications to the end of 2000. A relatively small number of the texts included here were published earlier but were missed in the preparation of AHI. The large number of new texts is not due, for the most part, to fresh discoveries (or, regrettably, to the publication of a number of inscriptions that were found in excavations before 1990), but to the publication of items held in private collections and museums.

^ Feldman (2010)

^ Shanks (2010)

^ Hoffman, Joel M. (2004). In the beginning : a short history of the Hebrew language. New York, NY [u.a.]: New York Univ. Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-0-8147-3654-8. Retrieved 23 May 2017. By 1000 B.C.E., however, we see Phoenician writings [..]

^ Israel Finkelstein & Benjamin Sass, The West Semitic Alphabetic Inscriptions, Late Bronze II to Iron IIA: Archeological Context, Distribution and Chronology, HeBAI 2 (2013), pp. 149–220, see p. 189: "From the available evidence Hebrew appears to be the first regional variant to arise in the West Semitic alphabet – in late Iron IIA1; the scripts of the neighbouring peoples remain undifferentiated. It is only up to a century later, in early Iron IIB, that the distinct characteristics in the alphabets of Philistia, Phoenicia, Aram, Ammon and Moab develop."

^ Naveh, Joseph (1987), "Proto-Canaanite, Archaic Greek, and the Script of the Aramaic Text on the Tell Fakhariyah Statue", in Miller; et al. (eds.), Ancient Israelite Religion.

^ Reinhard G. Kratz (2015). Historical and Biblical Israel: The History, Tradition, and Archives of Israel and Judah. OUP Oxford. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-19-104448-9. [...] scribes wrote in Paleo-Hebrew, a local variant of the Phoenician alphabetic script [...]

^ On January 10, 2010, the University of Haifa issued a press release stating that the text "uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as 'śh (עשה) ("did") and 'bd (עבד) ("worked"), which were rarely used in other regional languages. Particular words that appear in the text, such as almanah ("widow") are specific to Hebrew and are written differently in other Canaanite languages. "Most ancient Hebrew biblical inscription deciphered". University of Haifa. January 10, 2010. Archived from the original on October 5, 2011. Retrieved November 5, 2011. See also: "Qeiyafa Ostracon Chronicle". Khirbet Qeiyafa Archaeological Project. Retrieved November 5, 2011., "The keys to the kingdom". Haaretz.com. 6 May 2011. Retrieved 20 December 2014.

^ The Mishnah, ed. Herbert Danby, Oxford University Press: Oxford 1933, s.v. Megillah 1:8, p. 202 (note 20); Yadayim 4:5–6, p. 784 (note 6) (ISBN 0-19-815402-X)

^ Angel Sáenz-Badillos (1993). A History of the Hebrew Language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55634-1.

^ An illustration of the Siloam script is available at this link.

^ An illustration of a tomb inscription said to be scratched onto an ossuary to identify the decedent is available here. An article describing the ossuaries Zvi Greenhut excavated from a burial cave in the south of Jerusalem can be found in Jerusalem Perspective (July 1, 1991), with links to other articles.

^ Another tomb inscription is believed to be from the tomb of Shebna, an official of King Hezekiah. An illustration of the inscription may be viewed, but it is too large to be placed inline.

^ An illustration of the Lachish script is available at this link.

^ See Worker's appeal to governor.

^ The conduct complained about is contrary to Exodus 22, which provides:"If you take your neighbor's garment in pledge, you must return it to him before the sun sets; it is his only clothing, the sole covering for his skin. In what else shall he sleep?"

^ Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library.

^ e.g. File:Psalms Scroll.jpg

^ Jump up to:a b Sanhedrin 21b

^ Megillah 3a, Shabbat 104a

^ Sanhedrin 22a

^ Exodus 27, 10

^ Rabbeinu Chananel on Sanhedrin 22a

^ Maimonides. "Mishne Torah Hilchos Stam 1:19".

^ This is in imitation of the "Yehud coinage" minted in the Persian period. Yigal Ronen, "The Weight Standards of the Judean Coinage in the Late Persian and Early Ptolemaic Period", Near Eastern Archaeology 61, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), 122–126.

^ What's in a Name... - Israel Antiquities Authority (1 April 2019)

^ after Fischer, Steven R. (2001). A History of Writing. London: Reaction Books. p. 126.

^ Jump up to:a b The letters he and ḥēt continue three Proto-Sinaitic letters, ḥasir "courtyard", hillul "jubilation" and ḫayt "thread". The shape of ḥēt continues ḥasir "courtyard", but the name continues ḫayt "thread". The shape of he continues hillul "jubilation" but the name means "window".[citation needed] see: He (letter)#Origins.

^ The glyph was taken to represent a wheel, but it possibly derives from the hieroglyph nefer hieroglyph 𓄤 and would originally have been called tab טוב "good".

^ The root l-m-d mainly means "to teach", from an original meaning "to goad". H3925 in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979.

^ the letter name nūn is a word for "fish", but the glyph is presumably from the depiction of a snake, which would point to an original name נחש "snake".

^ H5564 in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance to the Bible, 1979.

^ the letter name may be from צד "to hunt".

^ "The old explanation, which has again been revived by Halévy, is that it denotes an 'ape,' the character Q being taken to represent an ape with its tail hanging down. It may also be referred to a Talmudic root which would signify an 'aperture' of some kind, as the 'eye of a needle,' [...] Lenormant adopts the more usual explanation that the word means a 'knot'." Isaac Taylor, History of the Alphabet: Semitic Alphabets, Part 1, 2003.