Q

Qq
This article is about the letter of the alphabet. For other uses,
see Q (disambiguation).
For technical reasons, "Q#" redirects here. For the (See below)
programming language, see Q Sharp.
Q or q is the 17th letter of the modern English alphabet and
the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English
is cue (pronounced /ˈkjuː/), plural cues.[1]

Contents

 1History
 2Typography
o 2.1Uppercase "Q"
o 2.2Lowercase "q"
 3Use in writing systems
o 3.1Phonetic and phonemic transcription Usage
o 3.2English standard orthography
o 3.3Other orthographies Writing Latin script
 4Other uses
system
 5Related characters
o 5.1Descendants and related characters in the
Latin alphabet Type Alphabetic and Logo
o 5.2Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
graphic
o 5.3Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations
 6Computing codes
Language of Greek language
 7Other representations
 8See also origin Latin language
 9References
o 9.1Notes
Phonetic (Table)
 10External links
usage /ˈkjuː/

History
Unicode value U+0051,
U+0071
Egyptian Etrusca Greek
Phoenician
hieroglyph n Qopp
qoph
wj Q a Alphabetical 17

position

History

The Semitic sound value of Qôp was /q/ (voiceless uvular Development

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.[2][3][4] /q/ is a sound common to Semitic languages, but 
not found in many European languages.[a] Some have even o



Time period Unknown to present
suggested that the form of the letter Q is even more ancient: it could have originated
from Egyptian hieroglyphics.[5][6]
In Greek, qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent several labialized velar stops, among
them /kʷ/ and /kʷʰ/.[7] As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed
to /p/ and /pʰ/ respectively.[8] Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa,
which stood for the number 90,[9] and phi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound /pʰ/ that
came to be pronounced /f/ in Modern Greek.[10][11]
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.[4] In the earliest Latin inscr