F

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

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The letter F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is ef, spelled eff when used as a verb.

On keyboards, often the F and J keys (or occasionally the D and K keys) have a raised dot or bar on their surface, perceptible to the touch, to assist in typing, especially for the blind. All other keys can be found with their relative positions around these two keys as the index finger normally rests on F and J keys (or the middle finger in the case of D and K).

History

F developed from the digraph FH that stood for /f/.

The Etruscans were the inventors of this digraph; F on its own stood for /w/ in Etruscan as in Greek (where the letter F, called Digamma in Greek, has disappeared due to the fact that the /w/ phoneme itself disappeared.) The origin of F is the Semitic letter wâw that also represented /w/ and originally probably represented a hook or a club.

The minuscule f is not to be confused with ſ, the archaic long s (or medial s). For example, "sinfulness" is rendered as "ſinfulneſs" using the long s. The use of the long s died out by the end of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion with f.

Phonetic use

In English, F represents the voiceless labiodental fricative ([f] in IPA), although in certain words, such as "of", it can be a voiced labiodental fricative ([v] in IPA). The digraph "ff", pronounced [f], is often used at the end of words (and, in rare personal or placenames, at the beginning). Both initial and final F are commonly used with other discrete consonants.

In other languages, F can take on different values, such as [ɸ] (voiceless bilabial fricative) in Romanized Japanese or [v] in Welsh (which uses the "ff" digraph for IPA [f]). Different digraphs can also be used, such as "pf" in German for the affricate formed by [p] and [f].

Alternative representations

Foxtrot represents the letter F in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter F is DitDitDahDit: · · - ·

In Braille the letter F is represented as ⠋ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

XX
X.
..

Computing

In Unicode the capital F is codepoint U+0046 and the lowercase f is U+0066.

The ASCII code for capital F is 70 and for lowercase f is 102; or in binary 01000110 and 01100110, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital F is 198 and for lowercase f is 134.

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

Ligatures

Common f ligatures

In formal typography, particularly for serifed fonts, minuscule f is one of the most commonly ligated letters. Unicode provides the following ligatures of f, l and i: ff, fi, fl, ffi and ffl (U+fb00 through U+fb04).

Meanings for F

• In acoustics, F is the abbreviation for the formant that ordered with its frequency from low to high.
• In the atmosphere of Earth, the F layer is part of the ionosphere.
• In biochemistry, F is the symbol for phenylalanine.
• In calendars, F is often an abbreviation for Friday, or for the month February.
• In chemistry, F is the symbol for fluorine.
• In communications, F sometimes stands for fax number.
• In computer science, the F programming language is a subset of Fortran 95, intended for educational and scientific use.
• In education, F is a failing grade
• In electronics, an F connector (i.e. used for inlet in cablemodems). See http://www.marine-electronics.net/techarticle/coax/f-con.htm
• In finance, F is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for Ford Motor Company.
• In grammar, F is often an abbreviation for the female grammatical gender.
• In information systems, F is often used as an abbreviation for the female sex in personal data records.
• In language, F is often used as mild censorship for the vulgar word, fuck.
• In international licence plate codes, F stands for France.
• In mathematics, F is often used as a digit meaning fifteen in hexadecimal and other positional numeral systems with a radix of 16 or greater.
• In meteorology, F is the abbreviation for the Fujita-Pearson Tornado Scale that classifies tornadoes according to damage and associated wind speeds (F0 through F5).
• In the SI system,
  • F is the symbol for farad, the SI derived unit for electric capacitance.
  • f, femto, is the SI prefix meaning 10^-15.
• In music,
  • F is a note.
  • f is a notation for forte.
• In optics, f is the focal length
• In photography, f is the focal length and F the F-number
• In physics,
  • F represents the Faraday constant.
  • f is the variable for frequency
  • F is used to indicate focal point, such as in concave mirrors.
  • F is used to represent Force as in the equation F = m * a
• In printing, f. is an abbreviation for folio (page in a book), although it is more common to see ff. as the plural form.
• In propositional logic F is the symbol for false.
• In radiocommunication, F is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to France.
• In slang, F can stand for felony. From the song "Ebonics" by Big L - "If you caught a felony / You caught a F".
• In temperature, ºF (or ℉, Unicode U+2109) is degrees Fahrenheit.

Variants of F

• The F with hook or script F (Unicode U+0191 and U+0192, Ƒ and ƒ) is used in the transcription of Kabye and other West African languages for the voiceless bilabial fricative. Lowercase ƒ is the monetary symbol for the Dutch florin, as well as the mathematical symbol of function
• F with dot above (Unicode U+1e1e and U+1e1f, Ḟ and ḟ) is used in the old orthography of Irish
• The French Franc can be written FF or ₣ (Unicode U+20a3)
• In mathematics, the script capital F (Unicode U+2131, ℱ) represents the Fourier transform
• There also exists:
  • The turned capital F (Unicode U+2132, Ⅎ), which is a letter that the Roman Emperor Claudius attempted to add to the Latin alphabet, the "digamma inversum". (There's no "turned small f" because were no minuscule letters at that time.)
  • The parenthesized small F (Unicode U+24a1, ⒡)
  • The circled F (Unicode U+24bb and U+24d5, Ⓕ and ⓕ)

See also