The article deals with the spread of the writing, based upon the Latin script, around the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Under the influence of the Western culture the idea of alphabetic Latinization from the late nineteenth century on was becoming popular among intellectuals in various countries of the world. Real alphabetic reforms were implemented only in some of them, including Albania, some countries of the South-East Asia, in some union and autonomous republics of the USSR (where later on, however, the alphabets were transferred onto the Cyrillic base), and, not without influence of the Soviet experience, in Turkey. In other countries, including Japan, China, India, Iran, countries of the Near East, the idea of Latinization was never put into practice.