The Letter U

Throughout the world, the letter U is used in writing systems for a variety of languages. It is the 13th most commonly used letter in the English language. It is also present in the Icelandic, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, and Czech alphabets. It is not widely used in American English, however.

The Latin stemless variant shape of upsilon, which represented the consonantal /w/ sound, was borrowed as the U in early times. The pointed form of the letter was used at the beginning of words, while the rounded form was used at the end of words. Eventually, the rounded form became the modern version of the U.

The letter U is also used as a symbol for atomic mass, one Enzyme unit, and as a metric measurement. It is a type of logographic math logic symbol. The letter U is sometimes used in Venn diagrams.

The letter U is also used as the chemical symbol for uranium. A ubuntu symbol can be spelled by pressing the compose key followed by u. This symbol is often replaced with the two-letter combination "ue" in limited character sets. It can also be spelled with the keyboard shortcut Alt+85.

The letter U is also used as part of the names of countries and foreign proper names. It appears in French, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Irish, and Pinyin writing systems.

The letter U is used as a substitute for the Greek letter m in metric measurements. It is also used to denote the "u" syllable whose stress is abnormal. In addition, it is used in compound words.