How did scholars determine that the Ugaritic script was alphabetic?

Scholars determined that the Ugaritic alphabet was an alphabetic system primarily due to the limited number of distinct signs found in the inscriptions discovered at Ugarit in 1929.1

While traditional cuneiform systems often utilized a vast inventory of ideograms and phonetic signs, the Ugaritic script contained only 30 different signs. This low count strongly indicated an alphabetic structure rather than a word-syllabic one. The decipherment process was further facilitated by the use of a vertical stroke as a word-divider, which helped scholars isolate individual words. By correctly assuming that the underlying language was an early North Semitic Canaanite dialect, researchers such as Hans Bauer, Edouard Dhorme, and Charles Virolleaud were able to solve the script with significant speed.12