# T

**T** (lowercase **t**) is the twentieth letter of the modern [English alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/english-alphabet) and a letter of the basic [Latin script](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-script), representing in English a voiceless alveolar stop, the sound written /t/ in the [International Phonetic Alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/international-phonetic-alphabet).<sup>[1](https://etymologia.org/word-origins/etymology-of-t/)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[2](https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/keating/IPA/IPA_DejaVu_2016_symbollist.pdf)</sup> In computing it occupies the code points U+0054 (uppercase) and U+0074 (lowercase) in the Basic Latin block, where it coincides with ASCII.<sup>[3](https://unicodedecoder.com/characters/latin-capital-letter-t)</sup>

| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Alphabet position | Twentieth letter of the English alphabet<sup>[1](https://etymologia.org/word-origins/etymology-of-t/)</sup> |
| Code points | U+0054 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T (decimal 84) and U+0074 LATIN SMALL LETTER T; both in the Basic Latin block, general categories Lu and Ll<sup>[3](https://unicodedecoder.com/characters/latin-capital-letter-t)</sup> |
| Encoding | UTF-8 encodes both as the single byte 54 hex, identical to ASCII; UTF-16 uses 2 bytes, UTF-32 uses 4<sup>[3](https://unicodedecoder.com/characters/latin-capital-letter-t)</sup> |
| Ancestry | Phoenician taw (𐤕) → Greek tau (Τ) → Etruscan → Latin T, with shape, order, and sound value carried through<sup>[4](https://www.divinityatlas.com/alphabet-letters/unnamed-20)</sup> |
| English sound | Voiceless alveolar stop /t/, IPA letter number 103<sup>[2](https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/keating/IPA/IPA_DejaVu_2016_symbollist.pdf)</sup> |
| Technical uses | SI prefix tera (T, 10<sup>12</sup>); symbol for period in physics; date-time separator in ISO 8601 (2024-01-01T12:00:00Z)<sup>[5](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2000/pdf/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2000-13.pdf)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[6](https://unicodes.io/symbols/latin-capital-letter-t/)</sup> |

## Origin and transmission

The letter's history runs through four scripts. The Phoenicians and other Semitic peoples used crossed forms for the letter they called **taw**, a word meaning "mark" or "sign"; the same cross served people who could not write as a signature mark on documents.<sup>[7](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-t/)</sup> In the earliest Semitic inscriptions the form is a St Andrew's cross, X, and both x-shaped and cross-shaped taw were used in Proto-Canaanite and early Phoenician writing until the tenth century BCE; the letter's stance stabilized in the ninth century BCE.<sup>[8](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/T)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[9](https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tav)</sup>

When the Greeks adopted the [Phoenician alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/phoenician-alphabet), they took taw over as **tau** (Τ), keeping the /t/ sound and a shape close to the modern capital.<sup>[7](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-t/)</sup> The Greek (and Latin) T is a variation of the cross-shaped taw.<sup>[9](https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tav)</sup> From Greek the letter passed through the Etruscan adaptation of a Western Greek alphabet into Latin, a straightforward continuation of shape, order, and sound value.<sup>[4](https://www.divinityatlas.com/alphabet-letters/unnamed-20)</sup> The Phoenician alphabet ended at taw, so T marks the end of the original Semitic letter sequence; letters beyond T in the [Latin alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-alphabet) are later additions.<sup>[10](https://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/classics/latalph.htm)</sup>

One neighboring Phoenician letter is often confused with this lineage. **Teth** (𐤈), the ninth Phoenician letter, an emphatic consonant transliterated ṭ, became Greek theta (Θ), and Latin represented theta with the digraph TH rather than adopting it as a letter. The Latin T descends from taw, not from teth.<sup>[11](https://www.visitbyblos.com/en/phoenician-alphabet/teth)</sup>

## Sound values

The sound the letter represents has stayed /t/ across the transmission, but its place of articulation varies. The Semitic and classical values were dental: in [Classical Latin](https://www.edgepedia.org/classical-latin), reconstructed pronunciation renders t as the dental stop [t̪], with the tongue against the teeth.<sup>[12](https://v1.cltk.org/en/latest/_modules/cltk/phonology/lat/transcription.html)</sup> English t is alveolar instead, made against the sockets of the teeth rather than the teeth themselves; this dental-versus-alveolar contrast is marked in phonetic transcription by writing the dental sound as t and the alveolar one as ṭ. [Languages of India](https://www.edgepedia.org/languages-of-india) possess both sounds, and their ṭ is probably produced still farther from the teeth than the English sound.<sup>[8](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/T)</sup>

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, t (U+0074) is the letter for the voiceless dental or alveolar plosive, number 103 in the IPA chart.<sup>[2](https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/keating/IPA/IPA_DejaVu_2016_symbollist.pdf)</sup>

## Letterforms through history

The capital has been stable. In Old Roman square capitals T has the familiar simple angular form; the rustic capital added a foot and slight curves; the uncial T has an asymmetrical crossbar with a curl at one end.<sup>[13](https://medievalwritings.atillo.com.au/scripts/letters/historyt.htm)</sup> The lowercase t developed from Roman cursive and the medieval minuscule hands: it is generally short, with a broad crossbar at the top or a crossbar partway up a taller vertical, and it is one of the less problematic letters to identify across scripts, though some pre-Carolingian national hands wrote it with a closed loop on the back that makes it easy to confuse with a.<sup>[13](https://medievalwritings.atillo.com.au/scripts/letters/historyt.htm)</sup> Carolingian minuscule featured a T with a curved tail like today's lowercase form, and the spread of mixed capital and minuscule writing, standardized further by fifteenth-century printing, produced the modern case pair.<sup>[14](https://quillbot.com/blog/letters/letter-t/)</sup>

## Derived and modified letters

Latin script extensions have produced a family of T-based letters for particular languages:<sup>[15](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/0100/)</sup>

- **Ť / ť** (T with caron, U+0164–U+0165), used in Czech and Slovak; the caron form is preferred in all contexts, though a form using an apostrophe is preferred in typesetting.<sup>[15](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/0100/)</sup>
- **Ŧ / ŧ** (T with stroke, U+0166–U+0167), used in Sami.<sup>[15](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/0100/)</sup>
- **Ţ / ţ** (T with cedilla, U+0162–U+0163), historically used for Romanian but now deprecated there: the European Union's encoding specification marks it "should not be used" for Romanian, and the Unicode nameslist directs that ț (T with comma below, U+021A–U+021B) be used instead.<sup>[16](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[15](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/0100/)</sup> The cedilla form remains listed for Semitic transliteration.<sup>[15](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/0100/)</sup>
- **Ṫ ṫ, Ṭ ṭ, Ṯ ṯ, Ṱ ṱ** in the Latin Extended Additional block (U+1E6A–U+1E71), with dot above, dot below, line below, and circumflex below respectively; the dotted forms serve Irish Gaelic old orthography and Indic transliteration.<sup>[17](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1e00/)</sup>

The dental-versus-alveolar distinction described above is written with the dot below: ṭ marks the retroflex or emphatic alveolar t in Indic and Semitic transliteration.<sup>[8](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/T)</sup><sup> • </sup><sup>[17](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1e00/)</sup>

Specialized forms also exist. The small capital **ᴛ** (U+1D1B, LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL T) is used in phonetic transcription systems, including the International Phonetic Alphabet.<sup>[18](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D00.pdf)</sup> The Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block encodes styled variants such as MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF ITALIC CAPITAL T (U+1D61B) for mathematical notation.<sup>[19](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D400.pdf)</sup>

## Technical and symbolic uses

Beyond its alphabetic role, capital T carries fixed meanings in technical notation. It is the [SI prefix](https://www.edgepedia.org/si-prefix) **tera**, meaning 10<sup>12</sup>, as in the style manual's table of metric prefixes.<sup>[5](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2000/pdf/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2000-13.pdf)</sup> In physics and engineering reference tables, T is the standard abbreviation for **period**, the duration of one cycle of a repeating phenomenon.<sup>[20](https://pubs.usgs.gov/msb/7000088/report.pdf)</sup> In the [ISO 8601](https://www.edgepedia.org/iso-8601) datetime standard, an uppercase T separates the date from the time in combined representations such as 2024-01-01T12:00:00Z.<sup>[6](https://unicodes.io/symbols/latin-capital-letter-t/)</sup>

## References

1. [The Etymology of "T", Etymologia](https://etymologia.org/word-origins/etymology-of-t/)
2. [International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 2016), UCLA Linguistics](https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/keating/IPA/IPA_DejaVu_2016_symbollist.pdf)
3. [LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T, Unicode Character Encoding Reference](https://unicodedecoder.com/characters/latin-capital-letter-t)
4. [Letter T, Divinity Atlas: Alphabet Letters](https://www.divinityatlas.com/alphabet-letters/unnamed-20)
5. [Chapter 9, Abbreviations and Letter Symbols, U.S. GPO Style Manual (2000)](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2000/pdf/GPO-STYLEMANUAL-2000-13.pdf)
6. [Latin capital letter T, Unicodes.io](https://unicodes.io/symbols/latin-capital-letter-t/)
7. [Letter T, Fonts.com Fontology](https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fontology-level-1-type-families-letter-t/)
8. [T, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikisource](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/T)
9. [Tav, Encyclopaedia Judaica via Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tav)
10. [The Latin Alphabet, J. B. Calvert](https://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/classics/latalph.htm)
11. [Teth 𐤈, Ninth Letter of the Phoenician Alphabet, Visit Byblos](https://www.visitbyblos.com/en/phoenician-alphabet/teth)
12. [cltk.phonology.lat.transcription, Classical Language Toolkit documentation](https://v1.cltk.org/en/latest/_modules/cltk/phonology/lat/transcription.html)
13. [The History of t, Medieval Writings](https://medievalwritings.atillo.com.au/scripts/letters/historyt.htm)
14. [Letter T: Origins, Fonts, Designs & Word Lists, QuillBot](https://quillbot.com/blog/letters/letter-t/)
15. [Latin Extended-A, Unicode 18.0.0 NamesList](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/0100/)
16. [Latin letters, EU Vocabularies, Publications Office of the EU](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters)
17. [Latin Extended Additional, Unicode 18.0.0 NamesList](https://www.unicode.org/Public//UCD/latest/charts/nameslist/1e00/)
18. [The Unicode Standard, Version 17.0, Phonetic Extensions chart (U+1D00)](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D00.pdf)
19. [The Unicode Standard, Version 17.0, Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols chart (U+1D400)](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1D400.pdf)
20. [Abbreviations, Signs, and Symbols for Scientific and Engineering Terms, USGS](https://pubs.usgs.gov/msb/7000088/report.pdf)

---
*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*

*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*

License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license