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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

L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el.

Contents 1 History 2 Usage 3 Alternative representations 3.1 Computing 4 Things named "L" 5 Things abbreviated as "L" 6 Alternate meanings for the symbol "L" 7 See also

History

The letter L is derived ultimately from the Semitic Lamed (crook/goad) which stood for the phonetic value /l/ as did the Greek letter Lambda Λ (upper case) or λ (lower case), as well as the equivalent Etruscan and Latin letters. In reference, it is spelled el or ell.

Usage

In English, L can have several values, depending on whether it occurs before or after a vowel. The alveolar lateral approximant (IPA [l]) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or please, while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA [ɫ]) occurs in bell and milk (see Dark L). This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use L, and is also a factor making L difficult to pronounce for users of languages such as Japanese or Chinese that either lack or have different values for L.

L can occur before almost any plosive, fricative, or affricate in English. Common digraphs include LL, which has a value identical to L in English but has the separate value voiceless alveolar lateral fricative (IPA /ɬ/) in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position.

A palatalised L (IPA /ʎ/) occurs in many languages, and is represented by GL in Italian, LL in certain varieties of Spanish, LH in Portuguese and Ļ in Latvian.

Alternative representations

Lima represents the letter L in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter L is DitDahDitDit: · - · ·

In Braille the letter L is represented as ⠇ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

X.
X.
X.

Computing

In Unicode the capital L is codepoint U+004C and the lowercase l is U+006C. In some fonts, a lowercase l may be difficult to distinguish from a 1, a more stylized version based on the handwritten ℓ is sometimes used - this is often used as a suffix on a number to represent represent litres. Its codepoint is U +2113 and its numeric character reference is "ℓ".

The ASCII code for capital L is 76 and for lowercase l is 108; or in binary 01001100 and 01101100, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital L is 211 and for lowercase l is 147.

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

Things named "L"

• In computational complexity theory, L (complexity) is the class of all decision problems calculable in logarithmic space.
• A mathematical adventure game was made for the BBC Micro called "L"
• In set theory, L denotes Gödel's constructible universe.
• The city of Chicago, Illinois has an elevated train called the L.
• L is a novel by the Norwegian author Erlend Loe.
• In the movie Men In Black, agent "L" (as in "Elle", French for "She") is the lead female character.
• In the manga Death Note, L is the alias of a brilliant, eccentric detective investigating the 'Kira' murders.
• L is a record alubum, audio cassette and 8-track by Lol Creme and Kevin Godley.

Things abbreviated as "L"

• In anatomy, L means lumbar, as in L-spine, or written with a number (from L1 to L5) refers to a numbered lumbar vertebra or lumbar spinal nerve.
• In biochemistry, L is the symbol for leucine.
• In botany, L. is the standard abbreviation for Carolus Linnaeus when cited as the author of plants he described, as in e.g. Stone Pine Pinus pinea L.
• In electrical engineering, L is often the variable for inductance.
• In physics, L is used to represent angular momentum.
• In etymology and languages, L. is the abbreviation for Latin.
• In finance, L is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for Liberty Media Corporation A
• In industry, L often denotes "large size".
• In international licence plate codes, L stands for Luxembourg.
• In navigation, L denotes the relative direction "left"; see left and right.
• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, L stands for Central Ontario.
  • In the United Kingdom, L stands for Liverpool.
• In Roman naming convention, L is the abbreviation for the praenomen Lucius.
• In the Metric system, l, ℓ or L is symbol for litre or liter, a unit volume.
• In video games, L is the symbol for Luigi, a Nintendo character.
• When affixed to the back of a car, L often means learner.

Alternate meanings for the symbol "L"

• In Roman numerals, L denotes the number 50 (there are also separate Unicode characters for this number, 0x216C "Ⅼ" and 0x217C "ⅼ").
• The lowercase l is sometimes used in place of the number 1 in typewritten text. Some typewriters did not even have a key for the numeral, so a number of people have retained the habit even in the computer age.

See also

Ł, Ll, £

Two-letter combinations La Lb Lc Ld Le Lf Lg Lh Li Lj Lk Ll Lm Ln Lo Lp Lq Lr Ls Lt Lu Lv Lw Lx Ly Lz LA LB LC LD LE LF LG LH LI LJ LK LL LM LN LO LP LQ LR LS LT LU LV LW LX LY LZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations L0 L1 L2 L3 L4 L5 L6 L7 L8 L9 0L 1L 2L 3L 4L 5L 6L 7L 8L 9L

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