L, or l, is the twelfth 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 el (pronounced /ˈɛl/EL), plural els.[1]
In most sans-serif typefaces, the lowercase letter ell⟨l⟩, written as the glyphl, may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" ⟨I⟩ (written as the glyph I); in some serif typefaces, the glyph l may be confused with the glyph 1, 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 U+004CLLATIN CAPITAL LETTER L or U+006ClLATIN SMALL LETTER L, 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.
Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol ℓ, 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 L or l for the liter,[3] without specifying a typeface.) In Unicode, the cursive form is encoded as U+2113ℓSCRIPT SMALL L from the "letter-like symbols" block. Unicode encodes an explicit symbol as U+1D4C1𝓁MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT SMALL L.[4] The TeX syntax <math>\ell</math> renders it as . In mathematical formulas, an italic form (ℓ) of the script ℓ is the norm.
In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ usually represents the phoneme /l/, 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 [l]) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or blend, while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA [ɫ]) occurs in bell and milk. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use ⟨l⟩; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ difficult for users of languages that lack ⟨l⟩ 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 ⟨l⟩ is known as lambdacism.
In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ 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
⟨l⟩ usually represents the sound [l] or some other lateral consonant. Common digraphs include ⟨ll⟩, which has a value identical to ⟨l⟩ in English, but has the separate value voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA [ɬ]) in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position. In Spanish, ⟨ll⟩ represents /ʎ/ ([ʎ], [j], [ʝ], [ɟʝ], or [ʃ], depending on dialect).
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 the blackletter form of the letter. In running text, its lower-case form (usually italicised), l, was more often seen.[a]
ₗ : Subscript small l was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[13]
ȴ : L with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics[14]
Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant [ɬ][15] The lower case is also used in the Romic alphabet. In Unicode, these are U+A780ꞀLATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED L and U+A781ꞁLATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED L.
The Latin letters ⟨L⟩ and ⟨l⟩ have Unicode encodings U+004CLLATIN CAPITAL LETTER L and U+006ClLATIN SMALL LETTER L. These are the same code points as those used in ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character encodings for ⟨L⟩ and ⟨l⟩ with diacritics, for most of those listed above; the remainder are produced using combining diacritics.
^For example, see the Diary of Samuel Pepys for 31December 1661: " I suppose myself to be worth about 500l. clear in the world, ..."[5]
References
^"L" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989) Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. (1993); "el", "ells", op. cit.
^ ab"The International System of Units (SI) | The SI brochure, 9th edition, 2019"(PDF). December 2022. Retrieved July 23, 2023. The litre, and the symbol lower-case l, were adopted by the CIPM in 1879 (PV, 1879, 41). The alternative symbol, capital L, was adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6; CR, 101 and Metrologia, 1980, 16, 56-57) in order to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one).
^"Foire aux questions sur l'horlogerie et les montres" [Frequently asked questions about watches and clocks]. horlogerie-suisse.com (in French). Archived from the original on January 21, 2022. Retrieved January 18, 2022. Par tradition ancestrale, les horlogers n'utilisent pas le millimètre mais la ligne pour désigner le diamètre d'encageage d'un mouvement. [By ancestral tradition, watchmakers do not use the millimeter but the line to designate the casing diameter of a movement]
^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. doi:10.1351/pac199668040957
