# F
**F** is the sixth letter of the [English alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/english-alphabet), a position it held in the [Latin alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-alphabet) from which English takes its letters.[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/F) In English it represents a voiceless labiodental fricative, a sound produced as expired air passes between the lower lip and the upper front teeth while the glottis and larynx are almost at rest.[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) Its history is unusual among Latin letters: the shape comes from the Greek digamma (Ϝ), a letter that dropped out of the ordinary [Greek alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/greek-alphabet) but survived in Latin as the sign for /f/.[3](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/f/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Alphabet position | Sixth letter of the English alphabet, as it was of the Latin[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/F) |
| Sound in English | Voiceless labiodental fricative, formed between the lower lip and upper incisive teeth[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) |
| Ancestry | Phoenician waw (/w/) → Greek digamma Ϝ (/w/) → Etruscan FH digraph → Latin F (/f/)[4](https://opentuwa.com/en/wiki/F) • [5](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10121058/1/Studies_in_the_Etruscan_loanwo.pdf) |
| Digital encoding | U+0046 (uppercase) and U+0066 (lowercase) in the Basic Latin block; ASCII decimal value 70[6](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B0046) |
| Medieval numeral use | F stood for 40; with a stroke added at the top, for 40,000[7](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-4/a/EB.16/193322700/393.html) |
| Print formation (Zaner-Bloser) | Uppercase F: 3 strokes with 2 pen lifts; lowercase f: 2 strokes with 1 pen lift[8](https://www.whattosayguide.com/how-to-write-letter-f) |
| Music | f abbreviates forte (play loudly); F names the fourth diatonic note, called fa in solfeggio[9](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/f_1) • [2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) |
## Origins: waw, digamma, and the Etruscan digraph
The ancestor of F is the Semitic letter *waw*, which represented the sound /w/. When the Greeks adopted the [Phoenician alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/phoenician-alphabet), waw split into two Greek letters: one form became upsilon (Υ), the ancestor of Latin U, V, and W, while another form became the digamma, so named because its shape resembled a doubled gamma (Γ).[4](https://opentuwa.com/en/wiki/F) • [3](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/f/) The digamma stood sixth in the early Greek alphabet and represented the semivowel /w/, a sound that survived in several Greek dialects into historical times; its use in early Greek was first proved inductively by [Richard Bentley](https://www.edgepedia.org/richard-bentley) from the meter of Homeric poetry.[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/F)
Because Greek dialects gradually lost the /w/ sound, the digamma fell out of the ordinary Greek alphabet; its graphical variant stigma (ϛ) lingered only as the numeral 6.[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/F) Before disappearing, however, the letter passed to Italy. In the Etruscan alphabet, which derived from archaic Greek, the digamma first kept its original value /w/, and the Etruscans wrote the sound /f/, absent from Greek, with the two-letter digraph FH.[4](https://opentuwa.com/en/wiki/F) • [10](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.1.0/ch07.pdf) An inscription on the pedestal of the Colossus at Delos was cited by older scholarship as evidence of the connection between Latin F and the Aeolian digamma.[7](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-4/a/EB.16/193322700/393.html)
**From /w/ to /f/.** Latin took the alphabet from the Etruscans. In the earliest written Latin the digamma still marked /w/, as in the archaic inscription *tita uendia*; only later did the Romans simplify the FH digraph by discarding the second element, leaving F alone for the labiodental fricative /f/, a sound Greek did not have.[5](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10121058/1/Studies_in_the_Etruscan_loanwo.pdf) The 1911 [Encyclopædia Britannica](https://www.edgepedia.org/encyclop-dia-britannica) describes the same sequence from the other end: after Latin ceased to use F for the consonant heard in *vis*, the letter H was dropped and F took on its new, lasting value as the unvoiced labiodental spirant.[1](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/F) Emperor Claudius later tried to reuse the digamma in inverted form (Ⅎ) as a letter for consonantal V, but the innovation did not outlive him.[7](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-4/a/EB.16/193322700/393.html)
## Sound and spelling in English and other languages
F is one of the more stable consonant letters across the languages that use the [Latin script](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-script); Treccani notes that its labiodental value has remained, with modest exceptions, in essentially all of them.[3](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/f/) English spelling, however, has not always paired f with a single sound. [Old English](https://www.edgepedia.org/old-english) lacked the letter v, so ⟨f⟩ covered both /f/ and /v/; the modern one-to-one relation between ⟨f⟩ and /f/ was established in the [Middle English](https://www.edgepedia.org/middle-english) period under the influence of French spelling habits, which introduced ⟨v⟩ as a separate letter.[11](https://user.keio.ac.jp/~rhotta/hellog/2014-04-26-1.html) A trace of the older alternation survives in grammar: in English and French the sound alternates with v across related word forms, as in *wife* and *wives*.[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) The digraph ph, borrowed for Greek-derived words such as *philosophy*, also spells the /f/ sound in English, while Italian simply writes f (*filosofia*).[12](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-2/a/EB.11/192015836/864.html)
Not every script has the sound. The [Devanagari](https://www.edgepedia.org/devanagari) system and most writing systems of eastern Asia derived from it have no F, and many American languages, which are largely guttural, also lack it.[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html)
## Handwriting and letterforms
Instructional handwriting systems construct F differently according to whether they prioritize speed, legibility, or ornamentation. In the Zaner-Bloser print method, the uppercase F is drawn in three strokes with two pen lifts, using right angles and a vertical stem with two parallel rightward bars, while the lowercase f has a rounded top hook, a straight stem resting on the baseline, and a midline crossbar, in two strokes with one pen lift. The [D'Nealian](https://www.edgepedia.org/dnealian) manuscript adds a slight forward slant, a curved entry foot on the capital's baseline stem, and an angled lead-in with an extended exit tail on the lowercase form.[8](https://www.whattosayguide.com/how-to-write-letter-f) The lowercase f is also one of the letters with substantial variant forms in historical scripts: the Folger Shakespeare Library's alphabet specimen book records several distinct handwritten f forms side by side.[13](https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/f/fc/AlphabetBook2023.pdf)
Form itself affects learning. Research on children's letter copying shows that shapes with the common Latin arrangement of a vertical stem plus an appendage on the right, such as F, are copied and written from memory more accurately than mirror-arranged shapes such as d, suggesting that children absorb the statistical regularities of letter shapes before they understand that letters represent sounds.[14](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3164302/)
## F in measurement, notation, and encoding
The letter carries a broad set of conventional meanings. As a medieval numeral, F equaled 40, and a version with an added stroke equaled 40,000; it likewise signifies 80 in Arabic and 10,000 in Armenian numbering traditions.[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) • [7](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-4/a/EB.16/193322700/393.html) In music, f directs the player to perform forte, loudly, with ff for fortissimo,[9](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/f_1) • [2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) and F names a note of the scale, the fourth diatonic interval, called fa in solfeggio.[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html) As an abbreviation it has stood for *filius*, *fecit*, Flavius, and [Fahrenheit](https://www.edgepedia.org/fahrenheit), and it appears as a mint mark on French coins of Angers, Prussian coins of [Magdeburg](https://www.edgepedia.org/magdeburg), and Austrian coins of Hall in the Tyrol.[2](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html)
In digital text, F occupies the code point U+0046 in the Unicode Basic Latin block, corresponding to ASCII decimal 70, with lowercase f at U+0066.[6](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B0046) Specialized variants have their own code points, among them the script capital F (ℱ, U+2131), used to denote the [Fourier transform](https://www.edgepedia.org/fourier-transform), and the turned capital F (Ⅎ, U+2132), which encodes the Claudian digamma inversum and relates the modern character back to the emperor's failed letter reform.[15](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2100.pdf)
## References
1. [F, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/F)
2. [Letter F, The American Cyclopaedia (Ripley and Dana), ChestofBooks](https://www.chestofbooks.com/reference/American-Cyclopaedia-V7/Letter-F.html)
3. [F, Treccani Enciclopedia on line](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/f/)
4. [F, OpenTuwa reference](https://opentuwa.com/en/wiki/F)
5. [Studies in the Etruscan Loanwords in Latin, UCL Discovery](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10121058/1/Studies_in_the_Etruscan_loanwo.pdf)
6. [U+0046 Latin Capital Letter F, unicodecharacter.org](https://www.unicodecharacter.org/u%2B0046)
7. [F, Encyclopædia Britannica 8th ed. (1853–60)](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-4/a/EB.16/193322700/393.html)
8. [How to Write Letter F in Print, Cursive, and Calligraphy Styles](https://www.whattosayguide.com/how-to-write-letter-f)
9. [F definition and meaning, Collins English Dictionary](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/f_1)
10. [The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0, Chapter 7](https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode12.1.0/ch07.pdf)
11. [#1825. ローマ字 の起源と発展, Hello! COR (Keio University)](https://user.keio.ac.jp/~rhotta/hellog/2014-04-26-1.html)
12. [F, Encyclopædia Britannica 6th ed. (1823)](https://jimclifford.ca/britannica-articles-2/a/EB.11/192015836/864.html)
13. [Alphabet Book, Folgerpedia (Folger Shakespeare Library)](https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/f/fc/AlphabetBook2023.pdf)
14. [Similarities Among the Shapes of Writing and Their Effects on Learning, PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3164302/)
15. [The Unicode Standard, Letterlike Symbols chart (U+2100–U+214F)](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2100.pdf)
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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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