“The standard Greek alphabet had twenty-four letters; the standard late Roman alphabet had twenty-three; ours has twenty-six.
From the standard Greek alphabet the Romans took A, B, E, Z, H, I, K, M, N, O, T, X and Y with hardly any change at all. . . . Remodeling and finishing other Greek letters, the Romans produced C (and G), L, S, P, R, D and V. F and Q were taken from two old characters abandoned by the Greeks themselves. And that makes twenty-three. . . .
The missing letters, J, U and W, were not used by the Romans at all. U and W developed from V about a thousand years ago, and J developed from the letter I about five hundred years ago.”

—Oscar Ogg, The 26 Letters, 1961.