The
Semitic sound value of
Qôp was (
voiceless uvular stop), and the form of the letter could have been based on the eye of a needle, a knot, or even a monkey with its tail hanging down. In an early form of
Ancient Greek,
qoppa (Ϙ) probably came to represent several
labialized velar stops, among them and . As a result of later sound shifts, these sounds in Greek changed to and respectively. Therefore, qoppa was transformed into two letters: qoppa, which
stood for the number 90, and
phi (Φ), which stood for the
aspirated sound that came to be pronounced in
Modern Greek. The
Etruscans used Q in conjunction with V to represent , and this usage was copied by the Romans with the rest of their alphabet. Later, the use of C (and its variant G) replaced most usages of K and Q: Q survived only to represent when immediately followed by a sound. In Turkey between 1928 and 2013 the use of the letter Q, alongside
X and
W, was banned from official government documents, such as street signs and brochures. The letter forms part of the
Kurdish alphabet but is not present in
Turkish.
Typographic variants in his 1529 book,
Champfleury : this long-tailed Q, used here in the Latin word "
POPVLVSQVE", was carved into
Trajan's Column AD 113. , or lie completely outside the bowl as in
PT Sans. In writing
block letters, bisecting tails are the fastest to write, as they require less precision. All three styles are considered equally valid, with most serif typefaces having a Q with a tail that meets the circle, while sans-serif typefaces are more equally split between those with bisecting tails and those without. Typefaces with a disconnected Q tail, while uncommon, have existed since at least 1529. A common method among
type designers to create the shape of the Q is by simply adding a tail to the letter O.
Old-style serif fonts, such as
Garamond, may contain two uppercase Qs: one with a short tail to be used in short words, and another with a long tail to be used in long words. This print tradition was alive and well until the 19th century, when long-tailed Qs fell out of favor; even recreations of classic typefaces such as
Caslon began being distributed with only short Q tails. Owing to the allowable variation between letters, Q, like Ampersand|, is often cited as a letter that gives type designers a greater opportunity for
self-expression.
Identifont is an automatic typeface identification service that identifies typefaces by asking questions about their appearance and later asks about the Q tail if the "sans-serif" option is chosen. In the Identifont database, the distribution of Q tails is: Some type designers prefer one "Q" design over another:
Adrian Frutiger, famous for the
airport typeface that bears his name, remarked that most of his typefaces feature a Q tail that meets the bowl and then extends horizontally. has listed "Q" as being her favorite letter.
Lowercase "q" s of and The lowercase "q" is usually seen as a lowercase "o" or "c" with a descender (i.e., downward vertical tail) extending from the right side of the bowl, with or without a swash (i.e., flourish), or even a reversed lowercase
p. The "q"'s descender is usually typed without a swash due to the major style difference typically seen between the descenders of the "g" (a loop) and "q" (vertical). When handwritten, or as part of a handwriting font, the descender of the "q" sometimes finishes with a rightward swash to distinguish it from the letter "g" (or, particularly in mathematics, from the digit "9"). ==Use in writing systems==