# Ç
**Ç** (lowercase **ç**), called C with cedilla, is a Latin-script letter formed by adding the cedilla, a small hook-shaped mark, beneath the letter C. In [Romance languages](https://www.edgepedia.org/romance-languages) such as French, Portuguese, and Catalan it marks a soft, s-like pronunciation of c before the vowels a, o, and u, where plain c would be read as /k[1](https://www.huffingtonpost.es/sociedad/la-rae-aclara-nombre-signo-c-tanto-llama-atencion-hpe1.html). In Turkish it instead denotes a voiceless affricate, the sound written "ch" in English[2](https://bqta.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/reconnaitre-les-langues-UE.pdf). The letter is encoded in Unicode as U+00C7 (capital) and U+00E7 (lowercase), Latin Capital/Small Letter C with [Cedilla](https://www.edgepedia.org/cedilla)[3](https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U%2B00C7).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Unicode code points | Ç U+00C7 and ç U+00E7, Latin (Capital/Small) Letter C with Cedilla[3](https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U%2B00C7) |
| Canonical decomposition | In NFD both decompose to C plus the combining cedilla U+0327[4](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/) |
| Name origin | From Spanish *cedilla* (older *zedilla*), literally "little z", a diminutive of the Greek letter zeta[5](https://www.etymonline.com/word/cedilla) |
| Sound in Romance languages | Marks an s-like value of c before a, o, and u, as in French *garçon* and Portuguese *canção*[1](https://www.huffingtonpost.es/sociedad/la-rae-aclara-nombre-signo-c-tanto-llama-atencion-hpe1.html) |
| Sound in Turkish | A voiceless affricate like English "ch"; Turkish also places a cedilla under s (ş)[2](https://bqta.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/reconnaitre-les-langues-UE.pdf) |
| Spanish history | Dropped from the Spanish alphabet in 1775[6](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/la-letra-que-desaparecio-del-alfabeto-espanol-y-si-existe-en-el-abecedario-catalan-n/) |
| Languages using it | Catalan, Basque, Turkish, Tatar, French, Occitan, Walloon, English, Azerbaijani, Portuguese, Kurdish, Turkmen, Spanish, and Albanian[7](https://arhiiv.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?lang=az&script=latin) |
## Function in individual languages
**Romance languages.** In French, Portuguese, and Catalan the cedilla resolves an ambiguity of the plain letter c, which is pronounced /k/ before the vowels a, o, and u. The mark signals that the c keeps the soft, s-like value it otherwise has before e and i; examples include French *façade* and *garçon* and Portuguese *açaí* and *coração*[1](https://www.huffingtonpost.es/sociedad/la-rae-aclara-nombre-signo-c-tanto-llama-atencion-hpe1.html). In Catalan the grapheme is called *ce trencada* ("broken c") and is written only before a, o, and u, never before e or i: *força*, *caça*, but *forces*, *forcis*[8](https://www.cpnl.cat/gramatica/41/1-l-alfabet).
**Turkish and related languages.** In Turkish, ç denotes a voiceless affricate, the sound written "ch" in English, and the language pairs it with ş, an s with cedilla; Turkish does not place a cedilla under t[2](https://bqta.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/reconnaitre-les-langues-UE.pdf). Azerbaijani, whose alphabet is very similar to Turkish, uses the same letter[2](https://bqta.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/reconnaitre-les-langues-UE.pdf).
**Spanish history.** In medieval and classical Spanish the ç marked, before a, o, and u, the same soft articulation that c had before e and i[1](https://www.huffingtonpost.es/sociedad/la-rae-aclara-nombre-signo-c-tanto-llama-atencion-hpe1.html). Its use declined after a sixteenth-century orthographic reform, and the letter disappeared from the Spanish alphabet in 1775[1](https://www.huffingtonpost.es/sociedad/la-rae-aclara-nombre-signo-c-tanto-llama-atencion-hpe1.html) • [6](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/la-letra-que-desaparecio-del-alfabeto-espanol-y-si-existe-en-el-abecedario-catalan-n/). According to the philologist Mila Segarra, the mark itself evolved from a kind of z used in Hispano manuscripts, which also explains the Spanish name meaning "little z"[9](https://beteve.cat/cultura/com-escrius-ce-trencada-catala/).
## Typography and encoding
Ç belongs to the Latin-1 Supplement block (range 0080–00FF), so it is available in essentially every modern character set[10](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf). Under Unicode normalization its canonical decomposed form is the plain letter C followed by the combining cedilla (U+0327), and the composed and decomposed forms are canonically equivalent[4](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/).
The glyph varies by language tradition. In Portuguese and Catalan the traditional connecting cedilla, attached to the bottom curve of the c, is the preferred design for Ç and ç, while French typography often shows a detached cedilla or a stroke passing beneath the letter[11](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/develop/character-design-standards/diacritics). For the s with cedilla used in Turkish, Unicode distinguishes a separate pair of code points (U+015E/U+015F), while modern Romanian text is written with s and t with comma below (U+0218–U+021B), a disunification made because the two marks behave differently in the two languages[12](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.1.0/ch07.pdf). An under-comma glyph remains an acceptable alternative for Ç in some designs[11](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/develop/character-design-standards/diacritics).
Beyond c, the cedilla or a comma below appears under other Latin letters in various alphabets, including s, k, l, n, r, and t[11](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/develop/character-design-standards/diacritics).
## Diacritic complexity and processing
Letters such as ç are the unit of analysis in computational work on diacritics. A 2026 cross-linguistic study of "diacritic complexity" by Adi Cohen and Yuval Pinter computed information-theoretic measures of character-diacritic combinations over 24 corpora in 15 languages and found that higher complexity correlates strongly with lower accuracy in diacritics-restoration tasks performed by BERT- and RNN-based models[13](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27653). Because ç is a precomposed single character rather than a base letter plus combining mark, transcription standards such as OCR-D encode it directly by its Unicode code point without combining marks[14](https://ocr-d.de/en/gt-guidelines/trans/tr_dia_level_2_0.html).
## References
1. [La RAE aclara el nombre del signo ç que tanto llama la atención, HuffPost España](https://www.huffingtonpost.es/sociedad/la-rae-aclara-nombre-signo-c-tanto-llama-atencion-hpe1.html)
2. [A field guide to recognizing EU languages](https://bqta.be/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/reconnaitre-les-langues-UE.pdf)
3. [Unicode Character "Ç" (U+00C7), Compart](https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U%2B00C7)
4. [UAX #15: Unicode Normalization Forms](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/)
5. [Cedilla, Etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/cedilla)
6. [La letra que desapareció del alfabeto español, Diario AS](https://as.com/actualidad/sociedad/la-letra-que-desaparecio-del-alfabeto-espanol-y-si-existe-en-el-abecedario-catalan-n/)
7. [Letter Database: Azerbaijani (Latin script), EKI](https://arhiiv.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?lang=az&script=latin)
8. [L'alfabet, Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística](https://www.cpnl.cat/gramatica/41/1-l-alfabet)
9. [I tu, com escrius la Ç? betevé](https://beteve.cat/cultura/com-escrius-ce-trencada-catala/)
10. [C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement, Unicode 18.0.0 code chart](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf)
11. [Character design standards - Diacritics, Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/develop/character-design-standards/diacritics)
12. [The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0, Chapter 7](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.1.0/ch07.pdf)
13. [Adi Cohen, Yuval Pinter (2026). The Degree of Language Diacriticity and Its Effect on Tasks. arXiv.](https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27653)
14. [OCR-D GT Guidelines, Level 2 (diacritics)](https://ocr-d.de/en/gt-guidelines/trans/tr_dia_level_2_0.html)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Languages and linguistics › Writing and notation systems › Latin script*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license