L

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

ℓ

In most sans-serif typefaces, the lowercase letter ell , written as the glyph , 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, 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, the cursive form is encoded as from the "letter-like symbols" block. Unicode encodes an explicit symbol as . The TeX syntax \ell renders it as \ell. In mathematical formulas, an italic form (**) of the script ℓ is the norm.

Use in writing systems

English

In English orthography, 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 [l] sound, while upper-case represents a voiceless [l̥] sound, a bit like double in Welsh.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the voiced alveolar lateral approximant and a small cap to represent the voiced velar lateral approximant.

Other uses

Main article: L (disambiguation)

• The capital letter L is used as the currency sign for the Albanian lek and the Honduran lempira. It was often used, especially in handwriting, as the currency sign for the Italian lira. Historically, it was commonly used as a currency sign for the British pound sterling (to abbreviate the Latin libra, a pound, see £sd); in modern usage, it has been overtaken by the pound sign (£), which is based on \mathfrak{L}, the blackletter form of the letter. In running text, its lower-case form (usually italicised), l, was more often seen.
• The Roman numeral L represents the number 50.
• In the International system of units, 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.

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:

Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L:

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

• 𐤋 : Semitic letter Lamedh, from which the following symbols originally derive
  • Λ λ : Greek letter Lambda, from which the following letters derive
    • Л л : Cyrillic 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

Codes for computing

Other representations

Computing

The Latin letters and have Unicode encodings and . These are the same code points as those used in ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character 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

References

1. "L" ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition (1989) ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged.'' (1993); "el", "ells", ''op. cit.''
2. "Ancient Hebrew Research Center".
3. Kleinsorge, Moritz. "Le Romain du Roi". Identity Letters.
4. [https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode15.1.0/ch22.pdf The Unicode Standard, Version 15.0, Chapter 22]
5. Pepys, Samuel. (31 December 2004). "The Diary of Samuel Pepys".
6. Gordon, Arthur E.. (1983). "Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy". University of California Press.
7. (December 2022). "The International System of Units (SI) {{!}} The SI brochure, 9th edition, 2019".
8. "Foire aux questions sur l'horlogerie et les montres".
9. 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 "[https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/A00543 Avogadro constant]". ''Pure and Applied Chemistry'', volume 68, issue 4, pages 957–1000. {{doi. 10.1351/pac199668040957
10. (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic".
11. (2020-07-11). "L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS".
12. Anderson, Deborah. (2020-12-07). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes".
13. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS".
14. (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet".
15. (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS".
16. Everson, Michael. (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS".
17. (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam".
18. Constable, Peter. (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS".
19. Miller, Kirk. (2020-07-11). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks".
20. (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS".
21. (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS".
22. "The Unicode Standard, Version 16.0". Unicode, Inc..
23. (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS".