Q, orq, is the seventeenthletter of theLatin alphabet, used in themodern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced/ˈkjuː/ⓘ, most commonly spelledcue, but alsokew,kue, andque.[1]
TheSemitic sound value ofQôp 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] In common with other glyphs derived from theProto-Sinaitic script, the letter has been suggested to have its roots inEgyptian hieroglyphs.[5][6]
In an early form ofAncient Greek,qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent severallabialized 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, whichstood for the number 90,[9] andphi (Φ), which stood for the aspirated sound/pʰ/ that came to be pronounced/f/ inModern Greek.[10][11]
TheEtruscans 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 earliestLatin 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 between 1928 and 2013 the use of the letter Q, alongsideX andW, was banned from official government documents, such as street signs and brochures. The letter forms part of theKurdish alphabet but is not present inTurkish.[14]
Typographic variants
The five most common typographic presentations of the capital letter QA long-tailed Q as drawn by French typographerGeoffroy Tory in his 1529 book,ChampfleuryThe printed long-tailed Q was inspired by ancientRoman square capitals: this long-tailed Q, used here in the Latin word "POPVLVSQVE", was carved intoTrajan's columnc.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 thetypeface used totypeset the letter Q, the letter'stail may eitherbisect itsbowl as inHelvetica,[16] meet the bowl as inUnivers, or lie completely outside the bowl as inPT Sans. In writingblock letters, bisecting tails are the 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 amongtype 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 asGaramond, 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 earlymetal type fonts included up to 3 different Qs: a short-tailed Q, a long-tailed Q, and a long-tailed Q-uligature.[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 asCaslon began being distributed with only short Q tails.[21][15] AmericantypographerD. B. Updike, who was known to disapprove of the long-tailed Q, celebrated their demise in his 1922 bookPrinting 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 earlydigital 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 ofOpenType fonts andLaTeX, 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,[17][24] like&, is often cited as a letter that gives type designers a greater opportunity forself-expression.[4]Identifont is an automatic typeface identification service that identifies typefaces by asking questions about their appearance and later asks about the Q tail 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 theairport 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 lowercasep. 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, from the digit "9").
In most European languages written in the Latin script, such asRomance andGermanic languages,⟨q⟩ appears almost exclusively in the digraph⟨qu⟩. InFrench,Occitan,Catalan, andPortuguese,⟨qu⟩ represents/k/ or/kw/; inSpanish, 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. InItalian,⟨qu⟩ represents[kw] (where[w] is thesemivowel allophone of/u/). InAlbanian, Q represents/c/, as inShqip.
^Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
References
^"Q",Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989). Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993) lists "cue" and "kue" as current.James Joyce used "kew"; it and "que" remain in use.
^Travers Wood, Henry Craven Ord Lanchester,A Hebrew Grammar, 1913, p. 7. A. B. Davidson,Hebrew Primer and Grammar, 2000,p. 4Archived 2017-02-04 at theWayback Machine. The meaning is doubtful. "Eye of a needle" has been suggested, and also "knot" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology vol. 45.
^Isaac Taylor,History of the Alphabet: Semitic Alphabets, Part 1, 2003: "The old explanation, which has again been revived by Halévy, is that it denotes an 'ape,' the characterQ being taken to represent an ape with its tail hanging down. It may also be referred to a Talmudic root which would signify an 'aperture' of some kind, as the 'eye of a needle,' ... Lenormant adopts the more usual explanation that the word means a 'knot'.
^abcWillen, Bruce; Strals, Nolen (September 23, 2009).Lettering & Type: Creating Letters and Designing Typefaces. Princeton Architectural Press. p. 110.ISBN9781568987651.Archived from the original on August 15, 2021. RetrievedNovember 19, 2020.The bowl of the Q is typically similar to the bowl of the O, although not always identical. The style and design of the Q's tail is often a distinctive feature of a typeface.
^Loxley, Simon (March 31, 2006).Type: The Secret History of Letters. I.B.Tauris.ISBN9780857730176.Archived from the original on February 21, 2022. RetrievedNovember 19, 2020.The uppercase roman Q...has a very long tail, but this has been modified and reduced on versions produced in the following centuries.
^"2: Q Shape".Identifont.Archived from the original on February 3, 2017. RetrievedFebruary 1, 2017.
^"3: $ style".Identifont.Archived from the original on February 3, 2017. RetrievedFebruary 2, 2017. To get the numbers in the table, click Question 1 (serif or sans-serif?) or Question 2 (Q shape) and change the value. They appear under X possible fonts.
^Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (January 30, 2006)."L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS"(PDF).Archived(PDF) from the original on September 19, 2018. RetrievedMarch 24, 2018.
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