Neural Networking for Dummies

So I want to write neural network that would process N-symbol words.

Should I provide 26 symbol neurons for each letter position, so that they give 1.0 for their matching letter? Should I duplicate position for each recognized words? I.e. vocabulary of 1000 N-sized words would require 1000*N*26.

hmm.. if we're all expecting this hard ai to be all god-like (singularity / etc..), then perhaps god is an ai? ^^

...typical humans xD still trying to capture (and enslave) the divine.. =)