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{{dablink|For [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Characters totally forbidden in page titles|technical reasons]], F# redirects here. For other uses, see [[F-sharp]]}}
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{{Latin alphabet navbox|uc=F|lc=f}}
'''F''' is the sixth letter in the [[Latin alphabet]]. Its name in [[English language|English]] is spelled '''ef''' or '''eff'''<ref>''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language''. 1976.</ref> ({{pronEng|ɛf}}).
==History==
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;text-align:center;"
|- bgcolor="#EEEEEE"
! Proto-Semitic W
! Phoenician W
! Etruscan W
! Greek Digamma (W)
! Roman F
|-----
|[[Image:Proto-semiticW-01.png]]
|[[Image:PhoenicianW-01.png]]
|[[Image:EtruscanF-01.svg|40px]]
|[[Image:GreekDigamma-01.png]]
|[[Image:RomanF-01.png|Roman F]]
|}
The origin of F is the [[Semitic languages|Semitic]] letter [[Waw (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": <hiero>T3</hiero>
The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, ''[[upsilon]]'' (which resembled its descendant, [[Y]], but was also ancestor to Roman 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. (Later on, this /w/ [[phoneme]] disappeared from Greek, 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 (orthography)|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 letter [[phi]] (Φ φ) came to approximate the sound of /f/ in Greek.
The [[lower case]] ''f'' is not to be confused with ''{{IPA|ſ}}'', the archaic ''[[long s]]'' (or ''medial s''). For example, "sinfulness" is rendered as "{{IPA|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''.
==Codes for computing==
{{Letter
|NATO=Foxtrot
|Morse=··–·
|Character=F6
|Braille=⠋
}}
In [[Unicode]] the [[majuscule|capital]] F codepoint is U+0046, the [[Lower case|lowercase]] f codepoint U+0066.
The [[ASCII]] code for capital F is 70 and for lowercase f is 102; or in [[Binary numeral system|binary]] 01000110 and 01100110, correspondingly.
The [[EBCDIC]] code for capital F is 198 and for lowercase f is 134.
The [[numeric character reference]]s in [[HTML]] and [[XML]] are "<tt>&#70;</tt>" and "<tt>&#102;</tt>" for upper and lower case respectively.
==Ligatures==
[[Image:Ligature drawing.svg|thumb|left|75px|Common f ligatures.]]
In formal [[typography]], particularly for [[serif]]ed fonts, [[Lower case|minuscule]] f is one of the most commonly [[ligature (typography)|ligate]]d letters.
Unicode provides the following ligatures of f, l and i: '''ff''', '''fi''', '''fl''', '''ffi''' and '''ffl''' (U+fb00 through U+fb04).
<br clear="all" />
==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 language|Kabye]] and other West African languages for the [[voiceless bilabial fricative]]. Lowercase ''ƒ'' is the [[currency sign]] for the [[Dutch gulden]] (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 language|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 exist:
**The '''turned F''' (Unicode U+2132 and U+214E, Ⅎ and ⅎ), a letter that the Roman Emperor [[Claudius]] attempted to add to the [[Latin alphabet]]
**The '''parenthesized small F''' (Unicode U+24a1, ⒡)
**The '''circled F''' (Unicode U+24bb and U+24d5, Ⓕ and ⓕ)
== See also ==
{{Commons|F}}
*[[Ef (Cyrillic)|Ф, ф - Ef (Cyrillic)]]
*[[Phi (letter)|Φ, φ or ϕ - Phi (Greek)]]
== References==
{{reflist}}
{{Latin alphabet}}
[[Category:Latin letters]]
[[af:F]]
[[als:F]]
[[ar:F]]
[[arc:F]]
[[ast:F]]
[[az:F]]
[[bs:F]]
[[br:F (lizherenn)]]
[[ca:F]]
[[cs:F]]
[[co:F]]
[[cy:F]]
[[da:F]]
[[de:F]]
[[dv:F]]
[[el:F]]
[[es:F]]
[[eo:F]]
[[eu:F]]
[[fa:F]]
[[fr:F (lettre)]]
[[fur:F]]
[[gan:F]]
[[gd:F]]
[[gl:F]]
[[ko:F]]
[[hr:F]]
[[ilo:F]]
[[is:F]]
[[it:F]]
[[he:F]]
[[ka:F]]
[[kw:F]]
[[sw:F]]
[[ht:F]]
[[la:F]]
[[lv:F]]
[[lt:F]]
[[hu:F]]
[[mzn:F]]
[[ms:F]]
[[nah:F]]
[[nl:F (letter)]]
[[ja:F]]
[[no:F]]
[[nn:F]]
[[nrm:F]]
[[uz:F (harf)]]
[[pl:F]]
[[pt:F]]
[[crh:F]]
[[ro:F]]
[[qu:F]]
[[ru:F (латиница)]]
[[se:F]]
[[scn:F]]
[[simple:F]]
[[sk:F]]
[[sl:F]]
[[sr:F (слово латинице)]]
[[sh:F]]
[[fi:F]]
[[sv:F]]
[[tl:F]]
[[th:F]]
[[vi:F]]
[[tr:F]]
[[uk:F (латиниця)]]
[[vo:F]]
[[yo:F]]
[[zh-yue:F]]
[[bat-smg:F]]
[[zh:F]]