L

Latin alphabet
	Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd
Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj
Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp
Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv
	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz

L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet.

History

The letter L is derived ultimately from the Semitic Lamed which stood for the phonetic value /l/ as did the Greek letter Lambda Λ (upper case) or λ (lower case), as well as the equivalent Etruscan and Latin letters. In reference, it is spelled el or ell.

Alternate representations

Lima represents the letter L in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter L is DitDahDitDit: � - � �

In Braille the letter L is represented as ⠇ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

X.
X.
X.

Computing

In Unicode the capital L is codepoint U+004C and the lowercase l is U+006C.

The ASCII code for capital L is 76 and for lowercase l is 108; or in binary 01001100 and 01101100, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital L is 211 and for lowercase l is 147.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "L" and "l" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for L

In biochemistry, L is the symbol for leucine.
In complexity theory, L is a complexity class of problems solvable in logarithmic space; see L (complexity).
In electrical engineering, L is often the variable for inductance.
In financial securities, L is the stock symbol for Liberty Media Corporation A
In industry, L often denotes "large size".
In international licence plate codes, L stands for Luxembourg.
In navigation, L denotes the relative direction "left"; see left and right.
In Roman numerals, L denotes the number fifty.
The lowercase l is sometimes used in place of the number 1 in typewritten text. Some typewriters did not even have a key for the numeral, so a number of people have retained the habit even in the computer age.
In the Metric system, l or L is symbol for litre or liter, the SI base unit for volume.
In video games, L is the abbreviation for Luigi, a Nintendo character.
When affixed to the back of a car, L often means learner.
The city of Chicago, Illinois has an elevated train called the L.
In taxonomy, L. is the standard attribution for Carolus Linnaeus, as in Blue Tit, Parus caeruleus, L. 1758.
In computational complexity theory, L (complexity) is the class of all decision problems calculable in logarithmic space.

L

History

Alternate representations

Computing

Meanings for L

See also