The letter F with hook (uppercase Ƒ,

lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...

: ƒ) is a letter of the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, based on the italic form of f; or on its regular form with a descender hook added. A very similar-looking letter, (a dotless ''j'' with a hook and a horizontal stroke), is used in the

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation ** International Phonetic Association, the organization behind the alphabet * India pale ale, a style of beer * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA ...

for a

voiced palatal implosive The voiced palatal implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J\_<. Typographically, the IP ...

Regular

Ƒ is used in writing the

Ewe language Ewe (''Eʋe'' or ''Eʋegbe'' ) is a language spoken by approximately 5 million people in West Africa, mainly in Ghana and Togo. Ewe is part of a group of related languages commonly called the Gbe languages. The other major Gbe language is F ...

in a straight form to represent the sound , as distinct from the letter F, which represents an . It is also used in the Avatime, Lelemi, Nyangbo-Tafi, and

Waci Waci (also spelled ''Ouatchi'') is a Gbe language of Togo and Benin. It is part of a dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such ...

languages.

Italic

The minuscule italic ''ƒ'', also called the

florin sign The florin sign (ƒ) is a symbol that is used for the currencies named florin, also called guilder. The Dutch name for the currency is ''gulden''. The symbol "ƒ" is the lowercase version of Ƒ of the Latin alphabet. In many serif typefaces, ...

, is used as a symbol for several currencies, including the former

Dutch guilder The guilder (, ) or florin was the currency of the Netherlands from 1434 until 2002, when it was replaced by the euro. The Dutch name was a Middle Dutch adjective meaning 'golden', and reflects the fact that, when first introduced in 1434, its ...

, the

Aruban florin The florin (; abbreviation: Afl.; ISO 4217, code: AWG) or Aruban guilder is the currency of Aruba. It is subdivided into 100 cents. The florin was introduced in 1986, replacing the Netherlands Antillean guilder at par. The Aruba currency exchang ...

, and the

Netherlands Antillean guilder The Netherlands Antillean guilder (; ) is a currency of Curaçao and Sint Maarten, which until 2010 formed the Netherlands Antilles along with Bonaire, Saba (island), Saba, and Sint Eustatius. It is subdivided into 100 ''cents'' (Dutch plural: ' ...

. It can be found as italic in non-italic fonts. The italic ''ƒ'' has been used to denote

mathematical functions In mathematics, a function from a set to a set assigns to each element of exactly one element of .; the words ''map'', ''mapping'', ''transformation'', ''correspondence'', and ''operator'' are sometimes used synonymously. The set is called ...

, or to indicate

aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

in photography (e.g. ƒ/2.8) in place of the more common italic ''f'' (in

serif font In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

s) or oblique ''f'' (in

sans-serif font In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

s). It can be represented with .

Appearance in computer fonts

Older

fonts In movable type, metal typesetting, a font is a particular #Characteristics, size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) inclu ...

and

character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical v ...

s included only the

minuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...

form for its use as an abbreviation.

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

includes both the

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally '' majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing syste ...

and the minuscule. Because of its origin, the italic ''ƒ'' (f with a hook) looks exactly like the italic ''f'' (f) in some typefaces. Ƒ and ƒ occupy code points and in

respectively, and may be entered by appropriate

input methods An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse oper ...

. On a computer running

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and using the

Windows-1252 Windows-1252 or CP-1252 ( Windows code page 1252) is a legacy single-byte character encoding that is used by default (as the "ANSI code page") in Microsoft Windows throughout the Americas, Western Europe, Oceania, and much of Africa. Initially ...

character encoding, the minuscule can be input using or . The character has been used on the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

to mean folder, in particular as part of a folder name. For example, the game ''

Bugdom ''Bugdom'' is a 1999 platform video game developed and published by Pangea Software for Mac OS 9. It was included with the iMac DV 2000 and later iBook models. ''Bugdom'' was ported to Microsoft Windows by Hoplite Research and released in 2000 ...

'', when included on some

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth and final major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever", highlight ...

installations, was contained in a folder called "Bugdom ƒ". This usage has died out with the advent of

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. The

Macintosh Programmer's Workshop Macintosh Programmer's Workshop (MPW) is a software development environment for the Classic Mac OS operating system, written by Apple Computer. For Macintosh developers, it was one of the primary tools for building applications for System 7.x an ...

also used the character to indicate software dependencies, from which the folder usage derived (the folder contained the files required to run the program). The character is created on the Macintosh by pressing . The character frequently appears in

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

mojibake Mojibake (; , 'character transformation') is the garbled or gibberish text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, often ...

. The lead byte 0x83 appears before a

Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...

character in

Shift JIS Shift JIS (also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by the Japanese company ASCII Corporation in conjunction with Microsoft and standardized as JIS ...

, but if interpreted as

encoding, it becomes the ƒ character.

Notes

External links

Practical Orthography of African Languages
{{DEFAULTSORT:F Latin letters with diacritics

Regular

Italic

Appearance in computer fonts

See also

Notes

External links