N is the fourteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is en.
Semitic Nûn was probably the picture of a snake; the sound value of the letter was /n/ - as in Greek, Etruscan, Latin and all modern languages. Greek name: Nυ, Ny.
Usage
N serves as an alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with N is NG, which produces a velar nasal in a variety of languages, usually final in English. Aspirated forms NH and NGH are sometimes seen in other languages.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the lowercase [n] represents the alveolar nasal sound. A small capital [ɴ] represents the uvular nasal.
Alternative representations
November represents the letter N in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
In international Morse code the letter N is DahDit: - ·
In Braille the letter N is represented as ⠝ (in Unicode), the dot pattern:
XX
.X
X.
Computing
In Unicode the capital N is codepoint U+004E and the lowercase n is U+006E.
The ASCII code for capital N is 78 and for lowercase n is 110; or in binary 01001110 and 01101110, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital N is 213 and for lowercase a is 149.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "N" and "n" for upper and lower case respectively.
Meanings for N
- In biochemistry, N is the symbol for asparagine
- In calendars, N is often an abbreviation for the month November
- In chemistry,
- N is the symbol for Nitrogen.
- n can be used to denote number of moles.
- In computer science and set theory, n is frequently used as a generic counting number
- in chess, N is a notation symbol for the knight piece, as the letter K is used for the king.
- In driving a motor vehicle, N designates the neutral gear of a transmission
- In electronics, N stands for a type of RF connector
- In finance, N is the U.S. ticker symbol for Inco Limited
- In international licence plate codes, N stands for Norway
- In route numbering, N may be used as a prefix,
- In mathematics
- In the metric system,
- In particle physics,
- In physics,
- n is the recommended symbol for: refractive index (optics), principal quantum number (atomic and nuclear physics), order of reflexion, electron number density (solid state physics), amount of substance (chemical physics)
- N is the recommended symbol for: number of molecules (molecular physics), number of turns (electricity and magnetism), neutron number (atomic and nuclear physics), quantum number of total angular momentum (molecular spectroscopy)
- As the first letter of a postal code,
- In radio communication, N is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United States. Call signs beginning with N are generally used by U.S. Navy radio stations, as well as civilian aircraft.
- In statistics, n is the size of a sample.
- In video games, N is the abbreviation for Nintendo. N is also the name of a Macromedia Flash game.
- In Microsoft Windows, Ctrl-N, and Mac OS, Command-N, creates a new document, a new window or a new folder.
- In weather forecasting and geography, N stands for north, one of the 4 cardinal directions.
See also