Q, or q, is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced /ˈkjuː/, most commonly spelled cue, but also kew, kue and que.[1]
The Semitic sound value of Qôp was /q/ (voiceless uvular stop), and the form of the letter could have been based on the eye of a needle, a knot, or even a monkey with its tail hanging down.[2][3][4]/q/ is a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in many European languages.[a] Some have even suggested that the form of the letter Q is even more ancient: it could have originated from Egyptian hieroglyphics.[5][6]
In an early form of Ancient Greek, qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent several labialized velarstops, among them /kʷ/ and /kʷʰ/.[7] As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to /p/ and /pʰ/ respectively.[8] Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa, which stood for the number 90,[9] and phi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound /pʰ/ that came to be pronounced /f/ in Modern Greek.[10][11]
The Etruscans used Q in conjunction with V to represent /kʷ/, and this usage was copied by the Romans with the rest of their alphabet.[4] In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the two sounds /k/ and /ɡ/, which were not differentiated in writing. Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere.[12] Later, the use of C (and its variant G) replaced most usages of K and Q: Q survived only to represent /k/ when immediately followed by a /w/ sound.[13]
In Turkey the use of the letter Q was banned between 1928 and 2013. This constituted a problem for the Kurdish population in Turkey as the letter was a part of the Kurdish alphabet. The ones who used the letter Q, were able to be prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to two years.[14]
Typographic variants
The five most common typographic presentations of the capital letter Q.A long-tailed Q as drawn by French typographer Geoffroy Tory in his 1529 book ChampfleuryThe printed long-tailed Q was inspired by ancient Roman square capitals: this long-tailed Q, used here in the Latin word "POPVLVSQVE", was carved into Trajan's column c. AD 113.A short trilingual text showing the proper use of the long- and short-tailed Q. The short-tailed Q is only used when the word is shorter than the tail; the long-tailed Q is even used in all-capitals text.[15]: 77
Uppercase "Q"
Depending on the typeface used to typeset the letter Q, the letter's tail may either bisect its bowl as in Helvetica,[16] meet the bowl as in Univers, or lie completely outside the bowl as in PT Sans. In writing block letters, bisecting tails are fastest to write, as they require less precision. All three styles are considered equally valid, with most serif typefaces having a Q with a tail that meets the circle, while sans-serif typefaces are more equally split between those with bisecting tails and those without.[17] Typefaces with a disconnected Q tail, while uncommon, have existed since at least 1529.[18] A common method among type designers to create the shape of the Q is by simply adding a tail to the letter O.[17][19][20]
Old-style serif fonts, such as Garamond, may contain two uppercase Qs: one with a short tail to be used in short words, and another with a long tail to be used in long words.[18] Some early metal type fonts included up to 3 different Qs: a short-tailed Q, a long-tailed Q, and a long-tailed Q-u ligature.[15] This print tradition was alive and well until the 19th century, when long-tailed Qs fell out of favor: even recreations of classic typefaces such as Caslon began being distributed with only short Q tails.[21][15] Not a fan of long-tailed Qs, American typographerD. B. Updike celebrated their demise in his 1922 book Printing Types, claiming that Renaissance printers made their Q tails longer and longer simply to "outdo each other".[15]Latin-language words, which are much more likely than English words to contain "Q" as their first letter, have also been cited as the reason for their existence.[15] The long-tailed Q had fallen out of use with the advent of early digital typography, as many early digital fonts could not choose different glyphs based on the word that the glyph was in, but it has seen something of a comeback with the advent of OpenType fonts and LaTeX, both of which can automatically typeset the long-tailed Q when it is called for and the short-tailed Q when it is not.[22][23]
Owing to the allowable variation between letters Q, Q is a very distinctive feature of a typeface;[17][24] as &, Q is oft cited as a letter that gives type designers a greater opportunity at self-expression.[4]
Identifont, an automatic typeface identification service that identifies typefaces by questions about their appearance, asks about the Q tail second if the "sans-serif" option is chosen.[25] In the Identifont database, the distribution of Q tails is:[26]
Some type designers prefer one "Q" design over another: Adrian Frutiger, famous for the airport typeface that bears his name, remarked that most of his typefaces feature a Q tail that meets the bowl and then extends horizontally.[20] Frutiger considered such Qs to make for more "harmonious" and "gentle" typefaces.[20] "Q" often makes the list of their favorite letters; for example, Sophie Elinor Brown, designer of Strato,[27] has listed "Q" as being her favorite letter.[28][29]
The lowercase "q" is usually seen as a lowercase "o" or "c" with a descender (i.e., downward vertical tail) extending from the right side of the bowl, with or without a swash (i.e., flourish), or even a reversed lowercase p. The "q"'s descender is usually typed without a swash due to the major style difference typically seen between the descenders of the "g" (a loop) and "q" (vertical). When handwritten, or as part of a handwriting font, the descender of the "q" sometimes finishes with a rightward swash to distinguish it from the letter "g" (or, particularly in mathematics, the digit "9").
Use in writing systems
Pronunciation summary
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet
In most European languages written in the Latin script, such as in Romance and Germanic languages, ⟨q⟩ appears almost exclusively in the digraph ⟨qu⟩. In French, Occitan, Catalan and Portuguese, ⟨qu⟩ represents /k/ or /kw/; in Spanish, it represents /k/. ⟨qu⟩ replaces ⟨c⟩ for /k/ before front vowels ⟨i⟩ and ⟨e⟩, since in those languages ⟨c⟩ represents a fricative or affricate before front vowels. In Italian⟨qu⟩ represents [kw] (where [w] is the semivowel allophone of /u/). In Albanian, Q represents /c/ as in Shqip.
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