L, or l, is the twelfth
letter of the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
, used in the
modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is
''el'' (pronounced ), plural ''els''.
History
Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox
goad or
cattle prod. Some have suggested that it represents a shepherd's staff.
Typographic variants
In most
sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...
typefaces, the lowercase letter ''ell'' , written as the
glyph
A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...
, may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" (written as the glyph ); in some
serif typefaces, the glyph may be confused with the glyph , the digit ''
one''. To avoid such confusion, some newer
computer fonts (such as
Trebuchet MS) have a
finial, a curve to the right at the bottom of the lowercase letter ''ell''. Other style variants are provided in
script typefaces and
display typefaces. All these variants of the letter are encoded in Unicode as or , allowing presentation to be chosen according to each context. For specialist mathematical and scientific use, there are a number of dedicated
codepoints in the
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block.
In the ''
Romain du Roi'', where the ascenders of lowercase letters have symmetrical serifs at the top, has an extra serif to the left at the
mean line to distinguish it from capital .
Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol , which is a
cursive
Cursive (also known as joined-up writing) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and m ...
, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter "ell". In Japan and Korea, for example, this is the symbol for the
liter. (The
International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using or for the liter,
without specifying a typeface.) In
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, the cursive form is encoded as from the "
letter-like symbols" block. Unicode encodes an explicit symbol as . The
TeX
Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
syntax
renders it as
. In mathematical formulas, an italic form (') of the script ℓ is the norm.
Use in writing systems
English
In
English orthography
English orthography comprises the set of rules used when writing the English language, allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. English's orthograp ...
, usually represents the phoneme , which can have several sound values, depending on the speaker's accent, and whether it occurs before or after a vowel. In
Received Pronunciation, the
alveolar lateral approximant (the sound represented in
IPA by lowercase ) occurs before a vowel, as in ''lip'' or ''blend'', while the
velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA ) occurs in ''bell'' and ''milk''. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use ; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of difficult for users of languages that lack or have different values for it, such as
Japanese or some southern dialects of
Chinese. A medical condition or speech impediment restricting the pronunciation of is known as
lambdacism.
In English orthography, is often silent in such words as ''walk'' or ''could'' (though its presence can modify the preceding vowel letter's value), and it is usually silent in such words as ''palm'' and ''psalm''; however, there is some regional variation. L is the
eleventh most frequently used letter in the English language.
Other languages
usually represents the sound or some other
lateral consonant. Common digraphs include , which has a value identical to in English, but has the separate value
voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA ) in
Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position. In Spanish, represents (, , , , or , depending on dialect).
A
palatal lateral approximant or palatal (IPA ) occurs in many languages, and is represented by in
Italian, in
Spanish and
Catalan, in
Portuguese, and in
Latvian.
In
Turkish, generally represents , but represents before , , , or .
In
Washo, lower-case represents a typical
sound, while upper-case represents a
voiceless ̥sound, a bit like double in
Welsh.
Other systems
The
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
uses to represent the
voiced alveolar lateral approximant and a
small cap to represent the
voiced velar lateral approximant.
Other uses
* The capital letter L is used as the
currency sign
A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned.
A symbol may be positioned in various ways, acc ...
for the
Albanian lek and the
Honduran lempira. It was often used, especially in handwriting, as the currency sign for the
Italian lira
The lira ( , ; : lire, , ) was the currency of Italy between 1861 and 2002. It was introduced by the Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic), Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1807 at par with the French franc, and was subsequently adopted by the different s ...
. Historically, it was commonly used as a currency sign for the British
pound sterling (to abbreviate the Latin , a pound, see
£sd); in modern usage, it has been overtaken by the
pound sign (£), which is based on
, the
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for ...
form of the letter. In running text, its lower-case form (usually
italicised), ''
l'', was more often seen.
* The
Roman numeral
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...
L represents the number
50.
* In the
International system of units
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French ), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official s ...
, the
liter (or litre) is abbreviated using a lower-case or , or an upper-case . The latter form is used to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one)
(For ℓ, see
above.)
* In watchmaking, the
ligne (a traditional French measure of length still used in the industry) is abbreviated using an upper-case L.
* In chemistry, L is used as a symbol for the
Avogadro constant.
[H. P. Lehmann, X. Fuentes-Arderiu, and L. F. Bertello (1996): "Glossary of terms in quantities and units in Clinical Chemistry (IUPAC-IFCC Recommendations 1996)"; page 963, item]
Avogadro constant
. ''Pure and Applied Chemistry'', volume 68, issue 4, pages 957–1000.
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
*
IPA-specific symbols related to L:
*
IPA superscript symbols related to L:
𐞛 𐞜
*
Extensions to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA):
𝼄 𐞝
*
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L:
**
**
* : Subscript small l was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902
*
ȴ : L with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics
*Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by
William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant
�The lower case is also used in the
Romic alphabet. In Unicode, these are and .
*𝼦 : Small letter l with mid-height left hook was used by the
British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for
romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
of the
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...
language.
*Other variations are used for phonetic transcription:
ᶅ ᶩ ᶫ 𝼑
𝼓
*Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some
medieval Nordic manuscripts
*
Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L:
**
**
**
**
**
*L with
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s:
Ĺ ĺ Ł ł Ľ ľ Ḹ ḹ L̃ l̃
Ļ ļ Ŀ ŀ Ḷ ḷ Ḻ ḻ Ḽ ḽ Ƚ ƚ Ⱡ ⱡ
Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations
*ℒ 𝓁 :
script letter L (uppercase and lowercase, respectively), used in mathematics. (In other contexts, a
script typeface (or
computer font) should be used.)
*ℓ : mathematical symbol 'ell'; liter (traditional symbol)
*£ :
pound sign
*Ꝉ ꝉ : Forms of L were used for medieval
scribal abbreviations
*
Ł or ł, "L with stroke" used in Polish and many neighbouring languages
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
* :
Semitic letter
Lamedh, from which the following symbols originally derive
**Λ λ :
Greek letter
Lambda, from which the following letters derive
***Л л :
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
letter
El
***Ⲗⲗ :
Coptic letter Lamda
***𐌋 :
Old Italic letter L, which is the ancestor of modern Latin L
****ᛚ :
Runic letter laguz, which might derive from old Italic L
***𐌻 :
Gothic letter laaz
Other representations
Computing
The Latin letters and have
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
encodings and . These are the same
code point
A code point, codepoint or code position is a particular position in a Table (database), table, where the position has been assigned a meaning. The table may be one dimensional (a column), two dimensional (like cells in a spreadsheet), three dime ...
s as those used in
ASCII
ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
and
ISO 8859
ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC ...
. There are also
precomposed character
A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diac ...
encodings for and with diacritics, for most of those listed
above; the remainder are produced using
combining diacritics.
Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the
alphanumeric symbols set in mathematics and science, and
halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy
CJK font compatibility.
Other
Notes
References
External links
*
*
*
*
{{Latin script, L}
ISO basic Latin letters