The Phoenicians, who lived in what is now Lebanon, created the earliest North Semitic alphabet known today. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters to represent consonant sounds. Further north on the coast of what is now Syria, another North Semitic-speaking group in the city-state of Ugarit developed an alphabet of 30 consonants, written in cuneiform, about 1400 bc. The Ugaritic alphabet was written in cuneiform, although its wedge shapes did not resemble Babylonian syllables. Its letters had the same order as the Phoenician alphabet, although the precise relationship remains unclear between the Ugaritic letters pressed into clay and the Phoenician letters drawn on papyrus. Ugarit was destroyed in 1200 bc, and scholars today know little about the development of its alphabet.

Other ancient Semitic groups, including the early Hebrews, the Moabites, and the Aramaeans, used variants of Phoenician writing. Aramaic became the dominant language in the Middle East from the 6th century bc on, adopted by the Persian Empire and by the Jews of Palestine. The square letter shapes of Aramaic diverged from the pointed Phoenician letters, and they became the basis for several later alphabets, including Arabic and the form of written Hebrew still used today.

The present-day Hebrew and Arabic alphabets still consist of consonant letters only, Hebrew having 22 letters and Arabic 28. Some of these letters, however, acquired the added function of representing long vowels. Another method of indicating vowels in written Hebrew or Arabic is by adding dots or dashes placed below, above, or to the side of the consonant. This system for indicating vowels developed for Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic during the 8th and 9th centuries ad to ensure the correct reading of sacred texts, and avoid the multiple readings possible when vowels are missing. Bls, for example, could be read as bless, bliss, bills, or bales. Like Phoenician and other Semitic languages, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic are written from the right to the left.