the vertical extension of the descender, which also does not complete the bowl at the bottom. In early Finnish writing, the curve to the bottom was omitted, thus the resulting letter resembled an n with a descender (like ꞃ). The lowercase letter q: In block letters, some Europeans like to cross the descender to prevent confusion with the numeral 9, which also can be written with a straight stem. In North America the descender often ends with a hook curving up to the right (). In Polish, the lowercase q is disambiguated from g by a serif extending from the bottom tip of the descender to the right. The lowercase letter s: See long s. The lowercase letter t: In block letters, t is often written with straight mark without the hook bottom. In modern cursive, the descender often ends with a hook to the right. The lowercase letters u and v: These letters have a common origin and were once written according to the location in the word rather than the sound. The v came first; the u originally had a loop extending to the left and was only used to start words. All other locations for either u or v were written with the latter. In Germany (especially southern Germany), Austria and Switzerland, lowercase u is often written with a horizontal stroke or swish over it (ŭ, ū, ũ), to distinguish it from n. (cf. German orthography#handwritten umlauts) The uppercase letter I: This letter is often written with one stroke on the top of the letter and one on the bottom. This distinguishes it from the lowercase letter l, and the numeral 1, which is often written as a straight line without the ear. The uppercase letter J: In Germany, this letter is often written with a long stroke to the left at the top. This is to distinguish it from the capital letter "I". The uppercase letter S: In Japan, this letter is often written with a single serif added to the end of the stroke. The uppercase letter Z: This letter is usually written with three strokes. In parts of Europe such as Italy, Germany and Spain, it is commonly written with a short horizontal crossbar added through the middle. This version is sometimes preferred in mathematics to help distinguish it from the numeral 2. In Polish, the character Ƶ is used as an allographic variant