Q

This article is about the letter. For other uses, see Q (disambiguation), Que (disambiguation), and Queue (disambiguation).

Q
Q q
File:Latin letter Q.svg
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and logographic
Language of origin	Greek language Latin language
Sound values	(Table) /ˈkjuː/ [q] [k]
In Unicode	U+0051, U+0071
Alphabetical position	17
History
Development	<hiero>O34</hiero><hiero>V24</hiero> Proto-Sinaitic Qup File:Protoquf.svg Phoenician Qoph 𐌒 Q q
Time period	Unknown to present
Descendants	• Ƣ  • Ɋ  • ℺  • Ԛ
Sisters	Φ Ф ק ق ܩ ࠒ 𐎖 ቀ Փ փ Ֆ ֆ
Other
Associated graphs	q(x)
Writing direction	Left-to-right

Q, or q, is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced /ˈkjuː/ , most commonly spelled cue, but also kew, kue, and que.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph wḏ	Phoenician Qoph	Western Greek Koppa	Etruscan Q	Latin Q
<hiero>V24</hiero>	File:PhoenicianQ-01.svg	File:Greek Koppa normal.svg	File:EtruscanQ-01.svg	Latin Q

The Semitic sound value of Qôp was /q/ (voiceless uvular stop), and the form of the letter could have been based on the eye of a needle, a knot, or even a monkey with its tail hanging down. /q/ is a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in many European languages. In common with other glyphs derived from the Proto-Sinaitic script, the letter has been suggested to have its roots in Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In an early form of Ancient Greek, qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent several labialized velar stops, among them /kʷ/ and /kʷʰ/. As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to /p/ and /pʰ/ respectively. Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa, which stood for the number 90, and phi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound /pʰ/ that came to be pronounced /f/ in Modern Greek.

The Etruscans used Q in conjunction with V to represent /kʷ/, and this usage was copied by the Romans with the rest of their alphabet. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the two sounds /k/ and /ɡ/, which were not differentiated in writing. Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C (and its variant G) replaced most usages of K and Q: Q survived only to represent /k/ when immediately followed by a /w/ sound.

In Turkey between 1928 and 2013 the use of the letter Q, alongside X and W, was banned from official government documents, such as street signs and brochures. The letter forms part of the Kurdish alphabet but is not present in Turkish.

Typographic variants

File:Q typographic styles.svg

The five most common typographic presentations of the capital letter Q

File:Champfleury letter Q illustration Geoffroy Tory (1529).png

A long-tailed Q as drawn by French typographer Geoffroy Tory in his 1529 book, Champfleury

File:Base columna trajana.jpg

The printed long-tailed Q was inspired by ancient Roman square capitals: this long-tailed Q, used here in the Latin word "POPVLVSQVE", was carved into Trajan's column c. AD 113.

File:Short tailed Q vs long tailed Q text example.svg

A short trilingual text showing the proper use of the long- and short-tailed Q. The short-tailed Q is only used when the word is shorter than the tail; the long-tailed Q is even used in all-capitals text.

Uppercase "Q"

Depending on the typeface used to typeset the letter Q, the letter's tail may either bisect its bowl as in Helvetica, meet the bowl as in Univers, or lie completely outside the bowl as in PT Sans. In writing block letters, bisecting tails are the fastest to write, as they require less precision. All three styles are considered equally valid, with most serif typefaces having a Q with a tail that meets the circle, while sans-serif typefaces are more equally split between those with bisecting tails and those without. Typefaces with a disconnected Q tail, while uncommon, have existed since at least 1529. A common method among type designers to create the shape of the Q is by simply adding a tail to the letter O.

Old-style serif fonts, such as Garamond, may contain two uppercase Qs: one with a short tail to be used in short words, and another with a long tail to be used in long words. Some early metal type fonts included up to 3 different Qs: a short-tailed Q, a long-tailed Q, and a long-tailed Q-u ligature. This print tradition was alive and well until the 19th century, when long-tailed Qs fell out of favor; even recreations of classic typefaces such as Caslon began being distributed with only short Q tails. American typographer D. B. Updike, who was known to disapprove of the long-tailed Q, celebrated their demise in his 1922 book Printing Types, claiming that Renaissance printers made their Q tails longer and longer simply to "outdo each other". Latin-language words, which are much more likely than English words to contain "Q" as their first letter, have also been cited as the reason for their existence. The long-tailed Q had fallen out of use with the advent of early digital typography, as many early digital fonts could not choose different glyphs based on the word that the glyph was in, but it has seen something of a comeback with the advent of OpenType fonts and LaTeX, both of which can automatically typeset the long-tailed Q when it is called for and the short-tailed Q when it is not.

Owing to the allowable variation between letters, Q, like &, is often cited as a letter that gives type designers a greater opportunity for self-expression. Identifont is an automatic typeface identification service that identifies typefaces by asking questions about their appearance and later asks about the Q tail if the "sans-serif" option is chosen. In the Identifont database, the distribution of Q tails is:

Q tail type	Serif	Sans-serif
Bisecting	1461	2719
Meets bowl	3363	4521
Outside bowl	271	397
"2" shape ($𝒬$)	304	428
Inside bowl	129	220
Total	5528	8285

Pie chart showing the proportion of different style Q tails in serif fonts to the total.

Pie chart showing the proportion of different style Q tails in sans-serif fonts to the total.

Some type designers prefer one "Q" design over another: Adrian Frutiger, famous for the airport typeface that bears his name, remarked that most of his typefaces feature a Q tail that meets the bowl and then extends horizontally. Frutiger considered such Qs to make for more "harmonious" and "gentle" typefaces. "Q" often makes the list of their favorite letters; for example, Sophie Elinor Brown, designer of Strato, has listed "Q" as being her favorite letter.

Lowercase "q"

File:Q and g comparison.svg

A comparison of the glyphs of ⟨q⟩ and ⟨g⟩

The lowercase "q" is usually seen as a lowercase "o" or "c" with a descender (i.e., downward vertical tail) extending from the right side of the bowl, with or without a swash (i.e., flourish), or even a reversed lowercase p. The "q"'s descender is usually typed without a swash due to the major style difference typically seen between the descenders of the "g" (a loop) and "q" (vertical). When handwritten, or as part of a handwriting font, the descender of the "q" sometimes finishes with a rightward swash to distinguish it from the letter "g" (or, particularly in mathematics, from the digit "9").

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of ⟨q⟩ or ⟨qu⟩ by language

Orthography	Spelling	Phonemes
Afar	⟨q⟩	/ʕ/
Albanian	⟨q⟩	/cç/
Azeri	⟨q⟩	/ɡ/
Catalan	⟨qu⟩	/kw/ or /k/
Standard Chinese (Pinyin)	⟨q⟩	/t͡ɕʰ/
English	⟨qu⟩	/kw/
Fijian	⟨q⟩	/ᵑɡ/
French	⟨qu⟩	/k/
Galician	⟨qu⟩	/k/
German	⟨qu⟩	/kv/
Hadza	⟨q⟩	/!/
Indonesian	⟨q⟩	/q/~/k/
Italian	⟨qu⟩	/kw/
K'iche	⟨q⟩	/qʰ/
Khmer romanization	⟨q⟩	/ʔ/
Kiowa	⟨q⟩	/kʼ/
Kurdish	⟨q⟩	/q/
Maltese	⟨q⟩	/ʔ/
Menominee	⟨q⟩	/ʔ/
Mi'kmaq	⟨q⟩	/x/
Mohegan-Pequot	⟨q⟩	/kʷ/
Nuxalk	⟨q⟩	/qʰ/
Portuguese	⟨qu⟩	/kw/ or /k/
Sasak	⟨q⟩	/ʔ/
Somali	⟨q⟩	/q/~/ɢ/
Sotho	⟨q⟩	/!kʼ/
Spanish	⟨qu⟩	/k/
Swedish	⟨qv⟩	/kv/ (pre-1900 spelling, still survives in proper names)
Uzbek	⟨q⟩	/q/
Vietnamese	⟨qu⟩	/kw/
Võro	⟨q⟩	/ʔ/
Wolof	⟨q⟩	/qː/
Xhosa	⟨q⟩	/!/
Zulu	⟨q⟩	/!/

English

In English, the digraph ⟨qu⟩ most often denotes the cluster /kw/; however, in borrowings from French, it represents /k/, as in 'plaque'. See the list of English words containing Q not followed by U. Q is the second least frequently used letter in the English language (after Z), with a frequency of just 0.1% in words. Q has the fourth fewest English words where it is the first letter, after X, Z, and Y.

Other languages

In most European languages written in the Latin script, such as Romance and Germanic languages, ⟨q⟩ appears almost exclusively in the digraph ⟨qu⟩. In French, Occitan, Catalan, and Portuguese, ⟨qu⟩ represents /k/ or /kw/; in Spanish, it represents /k/. ⟨qu⟩ replaces ⟨c⟩ for /k/ before front vowels ⟨i⟩ and ⟨e⟩, since in those languages ⟨c⟩ represents a fricative or affricate before front vowels. In Italian, ⟨qu⟩ represents [kw] (where [w] is the semivowel allophone of /u/). In Albanian, Q represents /c/, as in Shqip.

The letter is often not used often or at all in other languages, The letter is not officially part of the Cornish (Standard Written Form), Estonian, Icelandic, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Scottish Gaelic, Slovenian, Turkish, or Welsh alphabets. However, in some of them, it may be found in borrowings.

⟨q⟩ has a wide variety of other pronunciations in some European languages and in non-European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨q⟩ for the voiceless uvular stop.

Other uses

Main article: Q (disambiguation)

• The capital letter Q is used as the currency symbol for the Guatemalan quetzal.
• The Roman numeral Q is sometimes used to represent the number 500,000.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• Q with diacritics: ʠ Ɋ ɋ q̃
• Japanese linguistics: Small capital q (ꞯ) and modifier letter capital q (ꟴ)
• 𐞥 Modifier letter small q is used as a superscript IPA letter
• Gha: Ƣ ƣ

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤒: Semitic letter Qoph, from which the following symbols originally derive:
  • Ϙ ϙ: Greek letter Koppa
    • 𐌒: Old Italic Q, which is the ancestor of modern Latin Q
    • Ԛ ԛ: Cyrillic letter Qa

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

• ℺: rotated capital Q, a signature mark
• Ꝗ ꝗ, Ꝙ ꝙ: Various forms of Q were used for medieval scribal abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

• U+0051 Q <reserved-0051>
• U+0071 q <reserved-0071>
• U+FF31 Ｑ <reserved-FF31>
• U+FF51 ｑ <reserved-FF51>

Other

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Quebec

File:ICS Quebec.svg	File:Semaphore Quebec.svg	File:Sign language Q.svg	File:BSL letter Q.svg	⠟
Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-12345 Unified English Braille

See also

• List of English words containing Q not followed by U
• Mind your Ps and Qs – English idiom about minding manners
• Q factor – Resonator damping parameter
• Q# – Programming language for quantum algorithms
• QAnon – American conspiracy theory and political movement

External links

• Error creating thumbnail: File missing Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• File:Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg The dictionary definition of Q at Wiktionary
• File:Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg The dictionary definition of q at Wiktionary