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An Abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel. It is a term suggested by Peter T. Daniels^[1] to replace the common terms consonantary or consonantal alphabet or syllabary to refer to the family of scripts called West Semitic. Some linguists^[who?] consider West Semitic writing a type of alphabet, while others^[who?] classify it as a separate writing system, while others^[who?] view it as a type of syllabary^{[citation needed]}. In popular usage, abjads often contain the word "alphabet" in their names, such as "Phoenician alphabet" and "Arabic alphabet."

According to the formulations of Daniels, abjads differ from alphabets in that only consonants, not vowels, are represented among the basic graphemes. Abjads differ from another category invented by Daniels, abugidas, in that in abjads the vowel sound is implied by phonology, and where vowel marks exist for the system, such as nikkud for Hebrew and harakat for Arabic, their use is optional and not the dominant (or literate) form. In an abugida, the vowels (other than the "inherent" vowel) are always marked, either with a diacritic, a minor attachment to the letter or a standalone glyph. Some abugidas use a special symbol to suppress the inherent vowel so that the consonant alone can be properly represented. In a syllabary, a grapheme denotes a complete syllable, that is, either a lone vowel sound or a combination of a vowel sound with one or more consonant sounds.

Florian Coulmas, a critic of Daniels and the abjad terminology, argues that this terminology can confuse alphabets with "transcription systems," and that there is no reason to relegate the Hebrew, Aramaic or Phoenician alphabets to second class status as an "incomplete alphabet."^[2]

The system takes its name from the Arabic word for alphabet, which is made up of the first four letters of the Arabic alphabet in the older abjadi order, just as the English word "alphabet" is made up of the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha and beta).

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