The representation of the letters in Greek and Latin is different. Latin letters are usually sounded out phonetically in a way that mimics how they sound in speech. In Greek however, letters are sounded out as words, such as alpha, gamma and delta. Many of the shapes of the letters share commonalities in the two systems. The letters "A, B, M" and "T" appear similarly in each. However, the Latin form appears as a "P" in Greek and the Greek "P" like the Latin "R." Several Greek letters have no corresponding or similar value in Latin lettering and rather seem like non-alphabetic symbols to the Latin-biased eye. Such examples include Φ (Phi), Λ (Lambda), Ω (Omega) and Ψ (Psi).
Before it was changed by Christian monastic scholars, Latin lettering in early classical texts always appeared as streams of capital letters. In this sense, they appeared without any indications of capitalization or spacing between words or letters. This lasted until the 780s when Alcuin of York created the system known as Carolignian Minuscule. This new system reinvented the writing of Latin lettering in upper and lower cases and added increased clarity and legibility to its written form.
The styling of Greek letters ultimately proved remarkably suitable for mathematical and scientific applications. Due to the fact that not all the ideas, concepts or formulas in these disciplines could be easily represented either numerically or in Latin writing, the need for symbols proved strong. Since ancient times, Latin thus reincorporated Greek letters to serve as these symbols due to their distinct features. perhaps the most famous or recognizable of these is Pi (π ), the Greek letter for 'P,' whose lower case form is used to communicate the value 3.14 in geometry.
Each language alphabet has seen broad usage throughout the Western world. The Latin alphabet is used not only in the Latin or Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish), but in English, German, Turkish, Croatian and many others. Languages throughout the Slavic world in particular use alphabets and letters closely inspired by the Greek. These are various forms of Cyrillic alphabets or lettering. Related alphabets range from Russian to Serbian to Bulgarian. As of the first decade of the 21st century, Serbia officially recognizes both Cyrillic and Latin forms of the Serbian language alphabet.