Look up U or u in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Basic Latin alphabet
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

U is the twenty-first letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ˈjuː/) is spelled u;^[1] the plural is ues, though this is rare.^[2]

Contents 1 History 2 Codes for computing 3 See also 4 References

[edit] History

The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter V. See the letter V for details.

During the late Middle Ages, two forms of "v" developed, which were both used for modern u and v. The pointed form "v" was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form "u" was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, "have" and "upon" were printed haue and vpon. The first distinction between the letters "u" and "v" is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where "v" preceded "u". By the mid-1500s, the "v" form was used to represent the consonant and "u" the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter "u". Capital "U" was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.^[3]

[edit] Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital U is codepoint U+0055 and the lowercase u is U+0075.

The ASCII code for capital U is 85 and for lowercase u is 117; or in binary 01010101 and 01110101, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital U is 228 and for lowercase u is 164.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "U" and "u" for upper and lower case respectively.

[edit] See also

V W Ŭ Ʉ

Υ, υ - Upsilon (Greek) У, у - U (Cyrillic)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: U

[edit] References

The Basic modern Latin alphabet
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
Letter U with diacritics ÚúÙùŬŭÛûǓǔŮůÜüǗǘǛǜǙǚǕǖŰűŨũṸṹŲųŪūṺṻỦủȔȕȖȗƯưỨứỪừỮữỬửỰựỤụṲṳṶṷṴṵɄʉᵾᶙ history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646