U

U (named u /ˈjuː/, plural ues^[1][2]) is the twinty-first letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet an a vowel in the Inglis alphabet. Seembol 'U' is the chemical seembol for uranium.

U Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Cursive script 'u' and capital 'U' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style

History

The letter U ultimately comes frae the Semitic letter Waw bi wey o the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.

Durin the late Middlin Ages, twa forms o 'v' developit, which wur baith uised for its auncestor 'u' an modren 'v'. The pyntit fairm 'v' wis written at the beginnin o a wird, while a roondit fairm 'u' wis uised in the middlin or end, regairdless o soond. Sae whauras 'valor' an 'excuse' appeared as in modren printin, 'hae' an 'upon' wur printed 'haue' an 'vpon'. The first distinction atween the letters 'u' an 'v' is recordit in a Gothic alphabet frae 1386, whaur 'v' precedit 'u'. Bi the mid-16t century, the 'v' fairm wis uised tae represent the consonant an 'u' the vowel soond, givin us the modren letter 'u'. Caipital 'U' wis nae acceptit as a distinct letter till mony years later.^[3]

Uisage

In maist leids that uise the Latin alphabet, 'U' represents the close back roondit vowel /u/.

In Inglis the letter is pronoonced differently in different wirds. In closed syllables, it commonly represents /ʌ/ ("short U" as in 'duck') or /ʊ/ (as in 'put'). In open syllables, it commonly represents /u(ː)/ (as in 'blue') or /ju(ː)/ ("long U" as in 'mule'). Addeetionally, the letter U is uised in text messagin an internet an ither written slang tae denote 'you', bi virtue o baith bein pronoonced [juː].

In French the letter represents the close front roondit vowel; /u/ is representit bi 'ou'.

U is an aa the mathematics seembol for Union, which is uised mainly for Venn diagrams an geometry.

Relatit letters an ither similar characters

• N n : Latin letter N (an upside-doun "U u")
• Υ υ : Greek letter Upsilon
• У у : Cyrillic letter U
• V v : Latin letter V
• W w : Latin letter W
• Μ μ : Greek letter Mu
• Ŭ ŭ : Latin letter U wi breve
• Ü ü : Latin letter U wi diaeresis/umlaut
• Ʉ ʉ : Latin letter U wit bar

Computin codes

Character	U		u
Unicode name	LATIN CAIPITAL LETTER U		LATIN SMAA LETTER U
Encodins	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	85	U+0055	117	U+0075
UTF-8	85	55	117	75
Numeric chairacter reference	U	U	u	u
EBCDIC faimily	228	E4	164	A4
ASCII 1	85	55	117	75

¹ An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

Ither representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Uniform	··–

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Seegnal banner	Banner semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspellin)	Braille dots-136