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L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet.
History
The letter L is derived ultimately from the Semitic Lamed which stood for the phonetic value /l/ as did the Greek letter Lambda Λ (upper case) or λ (lower case), as well as the equivalent Etruscan and Latin letters. In reference, it is spelled el or ell.
Usage
In English, L can have several values, depending on whether it occurs before or after a vowel. The lateral alveolar approximant occurs before a vowel, as in LIP or PLEASE, while the velarized lateral alveolar approximant occurs in BELL and MILK. This velarization does not occur in many European languages that use L, and is also a factor making L difficult to pronounce for users of languages such as Japanese or Chinese that either lack or have different values for L.
L can occur before almost any plosive, fricative, or affricate in English. Common digraphs include LL, which has a value identical to L in English but has the separate value voiceless alveolar lateral fricative in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position.
Alternate representations
Lima represents the letter L in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
In international Morse code the letter L is DitDahDitDit: · - · ·
In Braille the letter L is represented as ⠇ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,
X.
X.
X.
Computing
In Unicode the capital L is codepoint U+004C and the lowercase l is U+006C.
The ASCII code for capital L is 76 and for lowercase l is 108; or in binary 01001100 and 01101100, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital L is 211 and for lowercase l is 147.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "L" and "l" for upper and lower case respectively.
Meanings for L
- In biochemistry, L is the symbol for leucine.
- In botany, L. is the standard abbreviation for Carolus Linnaeus when cited as the author of plants he described, as in e.g. Stone Pine Pinus pinea L.
- In computational complexity theory, L (complexity) is the class of all decision problems calculable in logarithmic space.
- In electrical engineering, L is often the variable for inductance.
- In financial securities, L is the stock symbol for Liberty Media Corporation A
- In industry, L often denotes "large size".
- In international licence plate codes, L stands for Luxembourg.
- In navigation, L denotes the relative direction "left"; see left and right.
- As the first letter of a postal code,
- In Roman numerals, L denotes the number fifty.
- The lowercase l is sometimes used in place of the number 1 in typewritten text. Some typewriters did not even have a key for the numeral, so a number of people have retained the habit even in the computer age.
- In the Metric system, l or L is symbol for litre or liter, the SI base unit for volume.
- In video games, L can be the abbreviation for Luigi, a Nintendo character.
- When affixed to the back of a car, L often means learner.
- The city of Chicago, Illinois has an elevated train called the L.
See also
Ł, Ll, £
Two-letter combinations starting with L:
Letter-digit combinations starting with L:
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