L

Egyptian hieroglyph	Phoenician lamedh	Western Greek Lambda	Etruscan L	Latin L

Lamedh may have come from a pictogram of an ox goad or cattle prod. Some have suggested a shepherd's staff.^[2]

Typographic variants

In most sans-serif typefaces, the lowercase letter ell ⟨l⟩, written l, may be difficult to distinguish from the uppercase letter "eye" ⟨I⟩; in some serif typefaces, the glyph l may be confused with the glyph 1, the digit one. To avoid such confusion, some newer computer fonts (such as Trebuchet MS) have a finial, a curve to the right at the bottom of the lowercase letter ell.

Another means of reducing such confusion is to use symbol ℓ, which is a cursive, handwriting-style lowercase form of the letter "ell"; this form is seen in European road signs and advertisements. In Japan, for example, this is the symbol for the liter. (The International Committee for Weights and Measures recommends using L or l for the liter,^[3] without specifying a typeface.) In Unicode, the cursive form is encoded as U+2113 ℓ SCRIPT SMALL L from the "letter-like symbols" block. Unicode encodes an explicit symbol as U+1D4C1 𝓁 MATHEMATICAL SCRIPT SMALL L.^[4] The TeX syntax <math>\ell</math> renders it as ${\displaystyle \ell }$ . In mathematical formulas, an italic form (ℓ) of the script ℓ is the norm.

Sometimes seen in Web typography, a serif font for the lowercase letter ell, such as l, in otherwise sans-serif text was used.

In the blackletter type used in England until the seventeenth century,^[5][a] the letter L is rendered as ${\displaystyle {\mathfrak {L}}}$ .

English

In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ usually represents the phoneme /l/, which can have several sound values, depending on the speaker's accent, and whether it occurs before or after a vowel. In Received Pronunciation, the alveolar lateral approximant (the sound represented in IPA by lowercase [l]) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or blend, while the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (IPA [ɫ]) occurs in bell and milk. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use ⟨l⟩; it is also a factor making the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ difficult for users of languages that lack ⟨l⟩ or have different values for it, such as Japanese or some southern dialects of Chinese. A medical condition or speech impediment restricting the pronunciation of ⟨l⟩ is known as lambdacism.

In English orthography, ⟨l⟩ is often silent in such words as walk or could (though its presence can modify the preceding vowel letter's value), and it is usually silent in such words as palm and psalm; however, there is some regional variation. L is the eleventh most frequently used letter in the English language.

Other languages

⟨l⟩ usually represents the sound [l] or some other lateral consonant.

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. In Spanish, ⟨ll⟩ represents /ʎ/ ([ʎ], [j], [ʝ], [ɟʝ], or [ʃ], depending on dialect).

A palatal lateral approximant or palatal ⟨l⟩ (IPA [ʎ]) occurs in many languages, and is represented by ⟨gli⟩ in Italian, ⟨ll⟩ in Spanish and Catalan, ⟨lh⟩ in Portuguese, and ⟨ļ⟩ in Latvian.

In Washo, lower-case ⟨l⟩ represents a typical [l] sound, while upper-case ⟨L⟩ represents a voiceless [l̥] sound, a bit like double ⟨ll⟩ in Welsh.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨l⟩ to represent the voiced alveolar lateral approximant and a small caps ⟨ʟ⟩ to represent the voiced velar lateral approximant.

• The capital letter L is used as the currency sign for the Albanian lek and the Honduran lempira. It was often used, especially in handwriting, as the currency sign for the Italian lira. Historically, it was commonly used as a currency sign for the British pound sterling (to abbreviate the Latin libra, a pound, see £sd); in modern usage it has been overtaken by the pound sign (£), which is based on the blackletter form of the letter. In running text, its lower-case form (usually italicised), l, was more often seen.^[b]
• The Roman numeral L represents the number 50.^[7]
• In the International system of units, the liter (or litre) is abbreviated using an upper-case (or a lower-case) L.^[3]
• In watchmaking, the ligne (a traditional French measure of length still used in the industry) is abbreviated using an upper-case L.^[8]
• In chemistry, L is used as a symbol for the Avogadro constant.^[9]

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• IPA-specific symbols related to L: ʟ ɫ ɬ ɭ ɺ ɮ ꞎ ˡ
• IPA superscript symbols related to L:^[10] 𐞛 𐞜
• Extensions to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA):^[11][12] 𝼄 𐞝
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to L:^[13] U+1D0C ᴌ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL L WITH STROKE and U+1D38 ᴸ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL L
• ₗ : Subscript small l was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902^[14]
• ȴ : L with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics^[15]
• Ꞁ ꞁ : Turned L was used by William Pryce to designate the Welsh voiced lateral spirant [ɬ]^[16] The lower case is also used in the Romic alphabet. In Unicode, these are U+A780 Ꞁ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED L, and U+A781 ꞁ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED L.
• 𝼦 : Small letter l with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.^[17]
• Other variations are used for phonetic transcription: ᶅ^[18] ᶩ^[18] ᶪ^[18] ᶫ^[18] 𝼑^[19][12] 𝼓^[19][12]
• Ꝇ ꝇ : Broken L was used in some medieval Nordic manuscripts^[20]
• Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to L:^[21]
  • U+AB37 ꬷ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
  • U+AB38 ꬸ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH DOUBLE MIDDLE TILDE
  • U+AB39 ꬹ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE RING
  • U+AB5D ꭝ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH INVERTED LAZY S
  • U+AB5E ꭞ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH MIDDLE TILDE
• L with diacritics: Ĺ ĺ Ł ł Ľ ľ Ḹ ḹ L̃ l̃ Ļ ļ Ŀ ŀ Ḷ ḷ Ḻ ḻ Ḽ ḽ Ƚ ƚ Ⱡ ⱡ

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

• ℒ ℓ : Script letter L (capital and lowercase, respectively)
• £ : pound sign
• Ꝉ ꝉ : Forms of L were used for medieval scribal abbreviations^[22]
• Ł or ł, "L with stroke" used in Polish and many neighbouring languages

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤋 : Semitic letter Lamedh, from which the following symbols originally derive
  • Λ λ : Greek letter Lambda, from which the following letters derive
    • Л л : Cyrillic letter El
    • Ⲗⲗ : Coptic letter Lamda
    • 𐌋 : Old Italic letter L, which is the ancestor of modern Latin L
      • ᛚ : Runic letter laguz, which might derive from old Italic L
    • 𐌻 : Gothic letter laaz

Computing

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Lima	ⓘ

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-123 Unified English Braille

• Media related to L at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of L at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of l at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ℓ at Wiktionary