F

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

The letter F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is ef, spelled eff when used as a verb (both pronounced [ɛf]).

Contents

1 History
2 Phonetic use
3 Keyboards and Computing
4 Ligatures
5 Meanings for F
6 Variants of F
7 See also

History

Proto-Semitic W	Phoenician W	Etruscan W	Greek Digamma (W)

The origin of F is the Semitic letter vâv that represented the sound /v/, and originally probably represented either a "hook" or a "club". It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph, such as that for "mace": T3

The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant, Y, but was also ancestor to our letters U, V, and W); and with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which resembled our letter F, but was pronounced /w/, as in Phoenician. (In later Greek, this phoneme disappeared, resulting in digamma being used as a numeral only).

In Etruscan, F also stood for /w/; however, they came up with the innovation of using the digraph FH to represent the sound /f/, and the letter acquired this sound on its own when the Romans picked it up (since they had already borrowed U independently from Greek upsilon to stand for /w/).

The minuscule f is not to be confused with ſ, the archaic long s (or medial s). For example, "sinfulness" is rendered as "ſinfulneſs" using the long s. The use of the long s died out by the end of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion with f.

It also should be said that the Greeks also used Φ (φ) for the English "F" sound.

Phonetic use

In English, F represents the voiceless labiodental fricative ([f] in IPA), although in certain words, such as "of", it can be a voiced labiodental fricative ([v] in IPA). The digraph "ff", pronounced [f], is often used at the end of words (and, in rare personal or placenames, at the beginning). Both initial and final F are commonly used with other discrete consonants.

In other languages, F can take on different values, such as [ɸ] (voiceless bilabial fricative) in Romanized Japanese or [v] in Welsh (which uses the "ff" digraph for IPA [f]). Different digraphs can also be used, such as "pf" in German for the affricate formed by [p] and [f].

Keyboards and Computing

Alternative representations for F

NATO phonetic		Morse code
Foxtrot		[··–·]

Signal flag	Semaphore	ASL Manual	Braille

F key on keyboards

The F key is a typical reference key for touch typing.

F character codes

In Unicode the capital F codepoint is U+0046, the lowercase f codepoint U+0066.

The ASCII code for capital F is 70 and for lowercase f is 102; or in binary 01000110 and 01100110, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital F is 198 and for lowercase f is 134.

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

Ligatures

Common f ligatures

In formal typography, particularly for serifed fonts, minuscule f is one of the most commonly ligated letters. Unicode provides the following ligatures of f, l and i: ﬀ, ﬁ, ﬂ, ﬃ and ﬄ (U+fb00 through U+fb04).

Meanings for F

In acoustics, F is the abbreviation for the formant that ordered with its frequency from low to high.
In astronomy,
* F stands for a March 16 through 31 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. D/1993 F2, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9) or asteroid (e.g. mpl|(3708) 1974 FV|1).
In the atmosphere of Earth, the F layer is part of the ionosphere.
In biochemistry, F is the symbol for phenylalanine.
In calendars, F is often an abbreviation for Friday, or for February.
In chemistry, F is the symbol for fluorine.
In communications, F sometimes stands for fax number.
In computer science, the F programming language is a subset of Fortran 95, intended for educational and scientific use.
In education, F is a failing grade.
In electronics, an F connector (i.e. used for inlet in cable modems). See http://www.marine-electronics.net/techarticle/coax/f-con.htm
In finance, F is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for Ford Motor Company.
In genetics, F stands for a generation descended from a parent generation.
In grammar, f is often an abbreviation for female, the grammatical gender.
In forms and personal documents, F is often used as an abbreviation for female.
In international licence plate codes, F stands for France.
In mathematics,
*F is a digit meaning fifteen in hexadecimal and other positional numeral systems with a radix of 16 or greater.
*F is a symbol for a number in the Fibonacci Series corresponding to a given index; F(8)=21
In meteorology, F is the abbreviation for the Fujita-Pearson Tornado Scale that classifies tornadoes according to damage and associated wind speeds (F0 through F5).
In military aviation, F- is used in the USAF designations for fighters and fighter bombers.
In the SI system,
*F is the symbol for farad, the SI derived unit for electric capacitance.
*f, femto, is the SI prefix meaning 10^-15.
In music,
* F is a note.
* f is a notation for forte.
In optics, f denotes the focal length.
In photography, f denotes the focal length or the f-number.
In physics,
* F represents the Faraday constant.
* f is a common variable name for frequency.
* F is used to indicate focal point, such as in concave mirrors.
* F is used to represent force as in the equation F = m · a.
In printing, f. is an abbreviation for folio (page in a book), although it is more common to see ff. as the plural form.
In propositional logic F is the symbol for false.
In radiocommunication, F is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to France.
In slang, F can stand for felony. From the song "Ebonics" by Big L - "If you caught a felony / You caught a F".
In probability theory and statistics, the F-distribution
°F is the symbol for degree Fahrenheit (a single-character version U+2109 ℉ is included in Unicode, but is only there for backward compatibility and should not be used in new documents).
F can also be a euphamism for the word fuck.

Variants of F

The F with hook or script F (Unicode U+0191 and U+0192, Ƒ and ƒ) is used in the transcription of Kabye and other West African languages for the voiceless bilabial fricative. Lowercase ƒ is the currency sign for the Dutch florin (which no longer exists as of the introduction of the Euro)
F with dot above (Unicode U+1e1e and U+1e1f, Ḟ and ḟ) is used in the old orthography of Irish
The French Franc can be indicated by FF or ₣ (Unicode U+20a3)
In mathematics, the script capital F (Unicode U+2131, ℱ) often represents the Fourier transform
There also exists:
* The turned capital F (Unicode U+2132, Ⅎ), which is a letter that the Roman Emperor Claudius attempted to add to the Latin alphabet, the "digamma inversum" (there's no "turned small f" because were no minuscule letters at that time.)
* The parenthesized small F (Unicode U+24a1, ⒡)
* The circled F (Unicode U+24bb and U+24d5, Ⓕ and ⓕ)

F