Q, or q, is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pronounced , most commonly spelled cue, but also kew, kue and que. History 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. is a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in many European languages. Some have even suggested that the form of the letter Q is even more ancient: it could have originated from Egyptian hieroglyphics. 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. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the two sounds and , which were not differentiated in writing. Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C (and its variant G) replaced most usages of K and Q: Q survived only to represent /k/ when immediately followed by a /w/ sound. Typography Uppercase "Q" Depending on the typeface used to typeset the letter Q, the letter's tail may either bisect its bowl as in Helvetica, meet the bowl as in Univers, or lie completely outside the bowl as in PT Sans. In writing block letters, bisecting tails are 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