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Ø (or
minuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
: ø) is a letter used in the
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
, Norwegian, Faroese, and Southern Sámi languages. It is mostly used as a representation of mid front rounded vowels, such as and , except for Southern Sámi where it is used as an
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
. The name of this letter is the same as the sound it represents (see usage). Among English-speaking typographers the symbol may be called a "slashed O" or "o with stroke". Although these names suggest it is a ligature or a
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
al variant of the letter ''o'', it is considered a separate letter in Danish and Norwegian, and it is alphabetized after "z" — thus x, y, z, æ, ø, and å. In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet, or in limited character sets such as ASCII, "ø" may correctly be replaced with the digraph "oe", although in practice it is often replaced with just an "o", e.g. in email addresses. It is equivalent to the letter " ö" used in Swedish (and a number of other languages), and may also be replaced with "ö", as was often the case with older typewriters in Denmark and Norway, and in national extensions of
International Morse Code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one of ...
. "ø" (minuscule) is also used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
to represent a close-mid front rounded vowel.


Language usage

* In modern
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
, Faroese, and Norwegian, the letter is a monophthongal close-mid front rounded vowel, the IPA symbol for which is also ( Unicode U+00F8). As with so many vowels, it has slight variations of "light" quality (in Danish, ("sister") is pronounced as , like the "eu" in the French word ) and "dark" quality (in Danish, ("bean") is pronounced as , like the "œu" in the French word ). /upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Danish_alphabet.ogg Listen to a Danish speaker reciting the Danish alphabet In the
Suðuroy Suðuroy (literally South Island, da, Suderø) is the southernmost of the Faroe Islands. The island covers 163.7 square kilometres (63.2 sq mi). In 2018 the population was 4,601. Suðuroy region (sýsla) comprises this island and Lítla ...
-dialect of Faroese, the short ø is pronounced , e.g. ("children"). The letter was used in both Antiqua and Fraktur from at least as early as the Christian III Bible. Under German influence, the letter ö appeared in older texts (particularly those using Fraktur) and was preferred for use on maps (e.g., for Helsingör or Læsö) until 1957. * The
Southern Sami language Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...
uses the letter ø in Norway. It is used in the diphthongs ''yø'' and ''øø'' . In Sweden, the letter ö is preferred. * Ø is used in the orthographies of several
languages of Africa The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southern ...
, such as Lendu, spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and
Koonzime Nzime (''Koonzime'') is a Bantu language of Cameroon, spoken by the Nzime and Dwe'e (''Bajwe'e'') people. Maho (2009) lists these as two languages. It is closely related to Mpo. Demographics Koonzime is spoken in most of the southern part of ...
, spoken in Cameroon. * In Danish, is also a word, meaning "island". The corresponding word is spelled ' in Swedish and in Norwegian. * Ø is used as the party letter for the left-wing Danish political party Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten). * (Ø with an
acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
, Unicode U+01FE) may be used in
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
on rare occasions to distinguish its use from a similar word with Ø. Example: , "the dog barks" against , "the dog does (it)". This distinction is not mandatory and the first example can be written or , the first variant (with ǿ) would only be used to avoid confusion. The second example cannot be spelled . In Danish, , "the dog barks", may sometimes be replaced by the non-standard spelling . This is, however, usually based on a misunderstanding of the grammatic rules of
conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics * Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics * Complex conjugation, the chang ...
of verbs ending in the letters ø and å. These idiosyncratic spellings are not accepted in the official language standard. On Danish keyboards and typewriters, the acute accent may be typed above any vowel, by pressing the acute key before pressing the letter, but Ǿ is not implemented in the Microsoft Windows keyboard layout for Danish. * Ø is used in
Old Icelandic Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...
texts, when written with the standardized orthography, denoting, among other things the umlauts ''o > ø'' and ''ǫ > ø''. * In Old Polish texts, the letter Ø represented a nasal vowel (after all nasal vowels had merged). * Outside Europe, Ø is used in Latin transliteration of the
Seneca language Seneca (; in Seneca, or ) is the language of the Seneca people, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League; it is an Iroquoian language, spoken at the time of contact in the western portion of New York. While the name ''Seneca'', attested as ...
as the equivalent of the
ampersand The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram , representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters ''et''—Latin for "and". Etymology Traditionally in English, when spelling aloud, any letter that ...
; it abbreviates the Seneca word . * Ø (or more properly, the similar
null sign The null sign (∅) is often used in mathematics for denoting the empty set (however, the variant \emptyset seems more commonly used). The same letter in linguistics represents zero, the lack of an element. It is commonly used in phonology, morp ...
, ∅), is used in English as a short for "no" or "none", but this usage is discouraged in handwriting, since it may be mistaken as another number, especially "0".


Similar letters

* The
Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...
,
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
,
Turkmen Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to: Peoples Historical ethnonym * Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages Ethnic groups * Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
, Tatar,
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, Icelandic, Rotuman,
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
, Finnish,
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...
, and Hungarian alphabets use the letter Ö instead of Ø. Hungarian orthography uses Ő for the same sound lengthened. * Ø / ø is not related to, and should not be confused with similar-looking Greek Φ / φ or
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
Ф / ф. * The
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
letter Ө has the same sound as Ø, which is used in the Cyrillic alphabets for
Kazakh Kazakh, Qazaq or Kazakhstani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Kazakhstan *Kazakhs, an ethnic group *Kazakh language *The Kazakh Khanate * Kazakh cuisine * Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan *Qazax, Azerbaijan *Kazakh Uyezd, administrative dis ...
, Mongolian,
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
, and other languages that have this sound. This is not to be confused with the Early Cyrillic letter fita Ѳ. * The letter Ø-with-umlaut (Ø̈, ø̈) was used by the Øresund bridge company, as part of their logotype, to symbolize its union between Sweden and Denmark. Since Ø-with-umlaut did not exist in computer fonts, it was not used in the text. The logotype now uses the spelling Øresundsbron, with Øresunds- being Danish and -bron being Swedish. The letter Ø-with-umlaut sometimes appears on packaging meant for the Scandinavian market so as to prevent printing the same word twice. For example,
liquorice Liquorice (British English) or licorice (American English) ( ; also ) is the common name of ''Glycyrrhiza glabra'', a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavouring can be extracted. The liqu ...
brand Snøre/Snöre's logo on the packaging is ''Snø̈re''. The letter is rarely used on maps (e.g.: Grø̈nland).


Similar symbols

* The letter "Ø" is sometimes used in mathematics as a replacement for the symbol "∅" (Unicode character U+2205), referring to the
empty set In mathematics, the empty set is the unique set having no elements; its size or cardinality (count of elements in a set) is zero. Some axiomatic set theories ensure that the empty set exists by including an axiom of empty set, while in other ...
as established by Bourbaki, and sometimes in linguistics as a replacement for same symbol used to represent a zero. The "∅" symbol is always drawn as a slashed circle, whereas in most typefaces the letter "Ø" is a slashed
ellipse In mathematics, an ellipse is a plane curve surrounding two focus (geometry), focal points, such that for all points on the curve, the sum of the two distances to the focal points is a constant. It generalizes a circle, which is the special ty ...
. * The diameter symbol (
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...
) (Unicode character U+2300) is similar to the lowercase letter ø, and in some typefaces it even uses the same
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
, although in many others the glyphs are subtly distinguishable (normally, the diameter symbol uses an exact circle and the letter ''o'' is somewhat stylized). The diameter symbol is used extensively in
engineering drawing An engineering drawing is a type of technical drawing that is used to convey information about an object. A common use is to specify the geometry necessary for the construction of a component and is called a detail drawing. Usually, a number of ...
s, and it is also seen in situations where abbreviating "diameter" is useful, such as on
camera lens A camera lens (also known as photographic lens or photographic objective) is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capab ...
es. For example, a lens with a diameter of 82 millimeters would be engraved with * Ø or
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...
is sometimes also used as a symbol for average value, particularly in German-speaking countries. ("Average" in German is '' Durchschnitt'', directly translated as ''cut-through''.) * Slashed zero is an alternate
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
for the zero character. Its slash does not extend outside the ellipse (except in handwriting). It is often used to distinguish "zero" ("0") from the Latin script letter "O" anywhere that people wish to preempt
confounding In statistics, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Con ...
of the two, particularly in encoding systems, scientific and engineering applications, computer programming (such as
software development Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development invol ...
), and telecommunications. It is also used in Amateur Radio call signs, such as XXØXX, XØXXX, and so on, in the United States and in other countries. See, also, for information on international amateur radio call signs. * The letter "Ø" is often used in trapped-key interlock sequence drawings to denote a key trapped in a lock. A lock without a key is shown as an "O". * The letter "Ø" is also used in written music, especially jazz, to type an ad-hoc
chord symbol A chord, in music, is any harmonic set of pitches/frequencies consisting of multiple notes (also called "pitches") that are heard as if sounding simultaneously. For many practical and theoretical purposes, arpeggios and broken chords (in which ...
for a
half-diminished chord In music theory, the half-diminished seventh chord (also known as a half-diminished chord or a minor seventh flat five chord) is a seventh chord composed of a root note, together with a minor third, a diminished fifth, and a minor seventh (1,&nbs ...
, as in "Cø". The typographically correct chord symbol is spelled with the root name, followed by a slashed degree symbol, as in "C𝆩". The slashed degree symbol is found in the musical symbols block of Unicode but is unsupported by some fonts.


History

The letter arose to represent an sound resulting primarily from i-mutation of . There are at least two theories about the origin of the letter ø: * It possibly arose as a version of the ligature, Œ, of the digraph " oe", with the horizontal line of the "e" written across the "o". * It possibly arose in
Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom o ...
as an O and an I written in the same place: compare
Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
's Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon period spelling ''Coinualch'' for standard '' Cēnwealh'' (a man's name) (in a text in Latin). Later the letter ø disappeared from Anglo-Saxon as the Anglo-Saxon sound changed to , but by then use of the letter ø had spread from England to Scandinavia.


Computers

* In Unicode, Ǿ and ǿ have the code points U+01FE and U+01FF. * On
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
, using the "United States-International" keyboard setting, it can be typed by holding down the Alt-Gr key and pressing "L". It can also be typed under any keyboard setting by pressing NumLock, holding down the key while typing (for uppercase) or (for lowercase) on the numeric keypad, provided the system uses
code page In computing, a code page is a character encoding and as such it is a specific association of a set of printable characters and control characters with unique numbers. Typically each number represents the binary value in a single byte. (In some co ...
1252 as system default. (Code page 1252 is a superset of ISO 8859-1, and 216 and 248 are the decimal equivalents of
hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexa ...
D8 and F8.) * In macOS, it can be typed by holding O, or o, and then typing 6. In MacOS and earlier systems, using a US English-language keyboard, the letter can be typed by holding the ptionkey while typing O, or o, to yield Ø, or ø. * In the X Window System environment, one can produce these characters by pressing Alt-Gr and o or O, or by pressing the Multi key followed with a slash and then o or O. * In some systems, such as older versions of MS-DOS, the letter Ø is not part of the widely used
code page 437 Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacri ...
. In Scandinavian codepages, Ø replaces the yen sign (¥) at 165, and ø replaces the ¢ sign at 162. * On an
Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...
operating system using any keyboard map, the letter can be typed by holding the ltkey while typing O, or o, to yield Ø, or ø. * Using Microsoft Word, ø and Ø may be typed by pressing
Ctrl In computing, a Control key is a modifier key which, when pressed in conjunction with another key, performs a special operation (for example, ); similar to the Shift key, the Control key rarely performs any function when pressed by itself. ...
- / followed by either
minuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
or
majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
O.


Encoding

In Unicode: * * Not to be confused with the mathematical signs: * *


See also

* Æ * Ä * Œ * Ö * Slashed zero


Notes


References

* Robert Bringhurst (2002). ''
The Elements of Typographic Style ''The Elements of Typographic Style'' is a book on typography and style by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992 by Hartley & Marks Publishers, it was revised in 1996, 2001 (v2.4), 2002 (v2.5), ...
'', pp. 270, 284. For typographic reference to "slashed o". {{DEFAULTSORT:O, shlash Danish language Faroese language Norwegian language Phonetic transcription symbols Latin-script letters Oe Polish letters with diacritics