The Letters

The story of the U is also the
story of our V, W, and Y. In
fact, the story of our U begins
further back, with the story of
the sixth letter of our alphabet.

A creature called Cerastes,
sort of a giant snake or dragon,
was depicted as an Egyptian
hieroglyph, which represented
a consonant sound roughly
equivalent to that of our f This
character was the forerunner of
the Phoenician waw, the most
prolific of all their letters. The
waw gave birth to our F, U, V,
W, and Y. It looked like our
present-day Y and represented
the semiconsonant sound of w,
as in “know” or “wing.”

At some point between 900
and 800 B.C., the Greeks adopt¬
ed the Phoenician waw, using it
as the basis for not one but two
letters in their alphabet: the
upsilon, for the и sound, and
the digamma, for a sound that
was roughly equivalent to our f.

The upsilon character was
adopted first by the Etruscans,
then by the Romans. They both
used it to represent the semi¬
consonant w and the и sounds,
but the form looked, again,
more like a Y than either a U or
a V. In ancient Rome the

sounds of U, V, and W as we
currently know them were not
systematically distinguished;
context usually determined the
correct pronunciation. As a

tf VYv

result, the Romans’ sharp¬
angled monumental capital V
was used to express the w
sound in words like VENI (pro¬
nounced WAY-nee) and as the
vowel и in words like IVLIVS
(pronounced YEW-lee-us).

What happened to the Y?
After the Romans conquered
Greece in the first century B.C.,
they added the Greek Y to their
alphabet for use in the Greek
words they had acquired. The
sound value attributed to it by
the Greeks was unknown in the
Latin language, and when the
Romans used it in the adopted
Greek words it took on the
same sound as the letter I. The
early English scribes frequently
used Y in place of I, particularly
when the minuscule i, which at
that time did not carry a dot,
appeared in close proximity to
the minuscules m, n, or u.
These characters were some¬
times quickly written as a series
of unconnected strokes, mak¬
ing it difficult for the reader to
distinguish them.

In the medieval period, two
forms of the U, one with a
rounded bottom and one that
looked like our V, were used to
represent the v sound. It wasn’t
until relatively recently that the
angular V was retained to rep¬
resent our v sound, and the
version with the rounded bot¬
tom was officially relegated to
the single job function of rep¬
resenting the vowel u.

The graphic form of the W
was created by the Anglo-Sax¬
ons around the thirteenth cen¬
tury. They called their new let¬
ter wen. This innovation arose
from their attempts to distin¬
guish the various sounds that
were represented by the U. They
used a V for both the и and v
sounds, but wrote the V twice
for the w sound. Eventually the
two Vs were joined to form a
single character. This early liga¬
ture endured to become part of
the common alphabet. Rather
than use what they considered
to be an alien letter, the French
preferred to double one of their
own. They chose the U and
called the letter double V, which
the English called a “double U.”
The double V form is retained
in typographic letterforms, but
because of the need for speed in
writing, the handwritten letter
looks more like a double U.

Senator Demi

The U is classified as a
medium-width letter, but
because it does not appear on
the Trajan inscriptions it has
no monumental model.

The U can be rendered in
three different ways. The first is

u u u

Albertus Trajan Caslon 540

an enlarged version of the low¬
ercase u, where the left stroke
curves to meet a vertical right
stroke. This design can be
found in such typefaces as
Albertus and Corvinus. In this
configuration the right stroke
also has a baseline serif that
extends to the right. The second
version of the U is symmetrical,

and can be seen in faces like
Trajan and ITC Novarese.
Here two equal-weight vertical
strokes are joined by a baseline
curve. Finally, there is the
thick-and-thin version, in
which the left stroke is heavy
and the right stroke is a hair¬
line. For examples of this treat¬
ment, look at faces like ITC
Benguiat and Caslon 540. The
thick-and-thin version, which
has no bottom serif, is the most
popular design.

Bodoni

Poster

The V is a medium-width
character, about two-thirds as
wide as it is high. In serif type¬
faces its vertex is almost always
pointed, in which case the point
must fall below the baseline at
least as far as the rounded
characters, ensuring a correct
optical height and maintaining
a strong baseline in text copy.

ITC Fenice

V

ITC Clearface

V

In ITC Tiffany and ITC Clear¬
face, for example, the first
stroke of the V drops below the
baseline, and the second stroke
joins it slightly above.

Ariadne

ITC Beesknei

Shelley Volante

Omnia

AG Book
Rounded

Monotype

Onyx

In some typefaces the parts
of the serifs that extend into
the counter are longer than
those that face outward. This is

VX T

ITC Legacy Serif \r

usually the designer’s attempt
to overcome some of the V’s
inherent spacing problems. For
examples of this approach,
look at Letraset’s Caxton and
ITC Century.

Latin Extra
Condensed

ITC Korinna