for by the split of shin into two independent Arabic letters, (shīn) and (sīn) which moved up to take the place of . The six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end. This is commonly vocalized as follows: . Another vocalization is: This can be vocalized as: Modern dictionaries and other reference books do not use the order to sort alphabetically; instead, the newer order is used wherein letters are partially grouped together by similarity of shape. The order is never used as numerals. Another kind of order was used widely in the Maghreb until recently (The Maghreb alphabet is still used in many Quranic schools in Algeria) when it was replaced by the Mashriqi order. Letter forms The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word. Letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial (middle), final, or isolated position (IMFI). While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions. Generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters () can only be linked to their preceding letter. For example, (Ararat) has only isolated forms because each letter cannot be connected to its following one. In addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures (special shapes), notably , which is the only mandatory ligature (the un-ligated combination is considered difficult to read). Table of basic letters Notes See the article Romanization of Arabic for details on various transliteration schemes. Arabic language speakers may usually not follow a standardized scheme when transcribing words or names. Some Arabic letters which don't have an equivalent in English (such as ق) are often spelled as numbers when Romanized. Also names are regularly transcribed as pronounced locally, not as pronounced in Literary Arabic (if they were of Arabic origin). Regarding pronunciation, the phonemic values given are those of Modern Standard Arabic, which is taught in schools and universities. In practice, pronunciation may vary considerably from region to region. For more details concerning the pronunciation of Arabic, consult the articles Arabic phonology and varieties of Arabic. The names of the Arabic letters can be thought of as abstractions of an older version where they were meaningful words in the Proto-Semitic language. Names of Arabic letters may have quite