This practice had the advantage also of distinguishing determinatives from phonograms. Thus the root or syllable un is regularly written ~ ~to avoid confusion with the detcrminative~.
It is noteworthy that though words were so freely spelled in alphabetic characters, especially in the time of the Old Kingdom, no advance was ever made towards excluding the cumbersome word-signs and biliteral phonograms, which, by a judicious use of determinatives, might well have been rendered qui
determinatives הגייה עם משמעויות, מילים נרדפות, הפכים, תרגומים, משפטים ועוד