General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20266 min read

U

U (lowercase u) is the 21st letter of the modern English alphabet and its fifth vowel¹. In the ancient Roman alphabet it was the 20th letter and was identical in form and origin with V, the same symbol serving both as a vowel and as a consonant². The separation of U and V into distinct letters is a development of manuscript writing and early printing, completed only in the seventeenth century.

Key fact	Detail
Position	21st letter of the modern English alphabet; fifth vowel¹
Roman origin	Identical in form and origin with V; one symbol used as both vowel and consonant²
Round form	The modified form u appears in uncial manuscripts from the third or fourth century, continuing in half-uncial (from c. 500) and minuscule manuscripts²
Alphabet size	Until the early seventeenth century the standard Latin alphabet had 23 letters; u and v were letterforms of one letter, and w was not part of it³
Printing convention	Printers before the 1630s used v initially and u medially: unto as "vnto", even as "euen"⁴
Minim avoidance	Middle English substituted -o- for -u- before -m-, -n-, or -r-, giving come, monk, tongue, worm⁵
Unicode	U+0055 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U; U+0075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U⁶

Latin origins

In Latin manuscripts written in capitals the form V was retained. The rounded form that became u first appears in uncial manuscripts, of which the earliest specimens belong to the third or fourth century, and it continues in the later half-uncial manuscripts (from about 500) and minuscule manuscripts (from the eighth century)². The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica describes u as a modification made in manuscript writing of the Latin inscriptional V, found on the inscriptions of Rome as early as the latter part of the second century AD⁷.

Classical Latin had no separate letter u. Nineteenth-century Latin textbooks that excluded u from the alphabet nonetheless conceded that it was used in Classical Latin as printed, with the Eton Latin Grammar noting that u was used as a vowel "for convenience of distinction" from v⁸.

One letter, two forms

Until the early seventeenth century, the standard Latin alphabet contained 23 letters. The letters now written i and j were considered different minuscule shapes of the same letter, and the same was true of u and v; the letter w was not part of the standard Latin alphabet at all³. A printer's choice between the u letterform and the v letterform depended on the letter's placement in a word and was governed by convention, which varied from printer to printer and often reflected national and regional preferences³.

The positional convention. In Middle English, after continental usage, the two symbols u and v were employed without clear distinction in value, each denoting either the vowel or the consonant². The working rule was positional: v at the beginning of a word and u within it. So unto was spelled "vnto" and even was spelled "euen"⁴. From the 1630s onwards, printers began using the u letterform to denote the vowel and the v graph to denote the consonant; before that time there was only one recognized letter, written or printed in two ways⁴. Etymonline records that the modern distinction was established around 1630 under the influence of continental printers, though some dictionaries and catalogues continued to list -u- spellings into the nineteenth century⁵.

The same interchangeability appears in Scottish documents. Grant Simpson, in his book Scottish Handwriting 1150-1650, reports a tendency in the later Middle Ages to use v at the beginning of a word and u within it, so that unused might be written "vnused"; the three letters u, v, and w were all used interchangeably, so underwoven might appear as "wndervouen"⁹. Scottish manuscripts also use the quh spelling for wh words: quhat (what), quhair (where), quhilk (which), and quha (who)⁹.

The letter w

The letter w was not part of the Latin alphabet but was introduced in English during the Middle Ages¹⁰. It was invented in the Middle Ages as simply a double u, and its form is a double v while its name is "double u", which attests to the interchangeability of u and v throughout the Middle Ages¹⁰. This history also explains why English does not call the letter "double-v"⁴.

In early printing, W and w type pieces were scanty in cases of roman type and were frequently exhausted when setting Dutch, English, or German text. Compositors alternatively represented W and w with VV or vv, or else modified V or v sort permanently by filing or shaving off a serif so that the two sorts could sit side by side in the forme and look like a w; in early German printing, a rounded r followed by a v was sometimes used as a stand-in for w¹¹.

Minims and the substituted o

The shape of u caused a practical problem in medieval handwriting. While angular script was in vogue, scribes made a practice of steering clear of u when it stood near n, m, or a second u (v, w), since confusion could easily arise: a run of five strokes could be taken for iini, inu, mu, um, uni, or vui, above all when the i carried no dot. This is why o came to be used, and it persists in numerous words such as monk, money, honey, come, won, wonder, cover, and love¹².

Etymonline traces this substitution to a French scribal habit before minims, the short downstrokes that jammed together in old-style handwriting, and credits it with transforming some, come, monk, tongue, and worm⁵.

U in computing

In the Unicode Standard, an individual code point is expressed as U+n, where n is four to six hexadecimal digits¹³. The letter U itself is encoded as U+0055 (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U) and u as U+0075 (LATIN SMALL LETTER U)⁶. Accented forms occupy nearby code points in the Latin-1 Supplement, such as U+00D9 (Ù), U+00DA (Ú), U+00DB (Û), and U+00DC (Ü)¹⁴.

References

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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