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Ou (Majuscule:Ȣ, Minuscule:ȣ) is aligature of theGreek lettersomicron ⟨ο⟩ andupsilon ⟨υ⟩ which was frequently used inByzantine manuscripts to indicate aclose back rounded vowel[u]. The ο–υ ligature is still seen today onicon artwork in Greek Orthodox churches, and sometimes ingraffiti or other forms of informal or decorative writing.

In printed works, the ligature is often replaced byƱ, an invertedomega.

The ligature is now mostly used in the context of theLatin alphabet, interpreted as a ligature of Latino andu: for example, in the orthography of theWyandot language and ofAlgonquian languages e.g. inWestern Abenaki to represent/ɔ̃/, and inAlgonquin to represent/w/,/o/ or/oː/. Today, in Western Abenaki, "ô" is preferred, and in Algonquin, "w" is preferred.

An ou ligature much different in form (with the two letters side-by-side as in most ligatures, as opposed to one on top of the other) was used in theInitial Teaching Alphabet.

The ligature, in both majuscule and minuscule forms, is occasionally used to represent minuscule of "У" in theRomanian transitional alphabet, as the glyph for monograph Uk (ꙋ) is rarely available in font sets.

TheUralic Phonetic Alphabet usesU+1D15 ᴕLATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OU andU+1D3D ᴽMODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL OU^[1] to indicate aback vowel of unknown quality.

InUnicode, it is encoded for use in Latin as "Latin Capital Letter OU" (U+0222 Ȣ) and "Latin Small Letter OU" (U+0223, ȣ) in theLatin Extended-B range,^[2][3] and for use in Cyrillic asCyrillic letter monograph Uk (uppercase U+A64A, Ꙋ, lowercase U+A64B, ꙋ), in addition to now deprecated "Cyrillic letter Uk" (uppercase U+0478, Ѹ, lowercase U+0479, ѹ), which may be realized with the "о" and "у" either side by side or combined vertically.

Despite the ligature's origin in Greek, there is no separate provision for its encoding in the Greek script, because it was deemed to be a mere ligature on the font level but not a separate underlying character. A proposal for encoding it as "Greek letter ou" was made in 1998,^[4] but was rejected.^[5]

• Latin-script ligatures
• Greek ligatures
• Vowel letters

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