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 (IPA ) occurs before a vowel, as in lip or please, while the velarized lateral alveolar approximant (IPA /ɫ/) occurs in bell and milk (See Dark L). 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 (IPA /ɬ/) in Welsh, where it can appear in an initial position.

A palatalised L (IPA /ʎ/) occurs in many languages, and is represented by GL in Italian, LL in certain varieties of Spanish, and LH in Portuguese.

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 stereochemistry, S (sinister) signifies counterclockwise arrangement of substituents around a carbon atom using the Cahn_Ingold_Prelog_priority_rules
• 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 Canada, L stands for Central Ontario.
  • In the United Kingdom, L stands for Liverpool.
• In Roman naming convention, L is the abbreviation for the praenomen Lucius.
• In Roman numerals, L denotes the number 50.
• 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 has an elevated train called the L.
• L is a novel by the Norwegian author Erlend Loe .

See also

Ł, Ll, £