N

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

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 the Republic of Ireland, standing for a national route.
  • In South Africa, standing for a national road.
• In mathematics
  • n can denote "number of" in algebraic equations.
  • blackboard bold represents the set of all natural numbers.
• In the metric system,
  • N is the symbol for the newton, the SI derived unit for force (physics)
  • n, nano, is the SI prefix meaning 10^-9
• In particle physics,
  • n is the symbol for a neutron.
  • N is the symbol for a nucleon.
• 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 Canada, N stands for Western Ontario.
  • In the United Kingdom, N stands for North London.
• 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

• Ñ