E

For the mathematical constant, see e (mathematical constant). For other uses, see E (disambiguation).

For technical reasons, "E#" redirects here. For E sharp, see E♯.

ISO basic 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

Cursive script 'e' and capital 'E'

E (named e /ˈiː/, plural ees) is the fifth letter and a vowel in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in many languages, including: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.

§History

Egyptian hieroglyph q’	Phoenician He	Etruscan E	Greek Epsilon	Roman/ Cyrillic E

The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its derivational source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. In etymology, the Semitic hê  has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul 'jubilation'), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words), in Greek hê became epsilon with the value /e/. Etruscans and Romans followed this usage. Although Middle English spelling used 'e' to represent long and short /e/, the Great Vowel Shift changed long /eː/ (as in 'me' or 'bee') to /iː/ while short /e/ (as in 'met' or 'bed') remained a mid vowel.

§Use in other languages

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /e/ represents the close-mid front unrounded vowel. In the orthography of many languages it represents either this or /ɛ/, or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: ⟨e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in Saanich, E represents a mid-central vowel /ə/. Digraphs with 'e' are common to indicate diphthongs and monophthongs, such as 'ea' or 'ee' for /iː/ or /eɪ/ in English, 'ei' for /aɪ/ in German, and 'eu' for /ø/ in French or /ɔɪ/ in German.

§Most common letter

'E' is the most common (or highest-frequency) letter in the English alphabet (starting off the typographer's phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU) and several other European languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. In the story The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe, a character figures out a random character code by remembering that the most used letter in English is E. This makes it a hard and popular letter to use when writing lipograms. Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby (1939) is considered a "dreadful" novel, and that "at least part of Wright's narrative issues were caused by language limitations imposed by the lack of E." Both Georges Perec's novel A Void (La Disparition) (1969) and its English translation by Gilbert Adair omit 'e' and are considered better works.

§Related letters and other similar characters

• Ε ε : Greek letter Epsilon
• Ɛ ɛ : Latin letter Epsilon
• Ə ə : Latin letter Schwa
• Е е : Cyrillic letter Ye
• Є є : Cyrillic letter Ukrainian Ye
• Э э : Cyrillic letter E
• Ę ę : Polish and Lithuanian letter Ę
• ℮ : Estimated sign (used on prepackaged goods for sale within the European Union).
• € : Euro sign.
• ℯ : a mathematical constant.
• ㅌ : a Hangul letter.
• ∈ : in set theory, the symbol for set membership.
• ℇ : the Euler–Mascheroni constant.

§Computing codes

Character	E		e
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E		LATIN SMALL LETTER E
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	69	U+0045	101	U+0065
UTF-8	69	45	101	65
Numeric character reference	E	E	e	e
EBCDIC family	197	C5	133	85
ASCII 1	69	45	101	65

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

§Other representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Echo	·

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	Braille dots-15

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'e' is signed by extending the index finger of the right hand touching the tip of index on the left hand, with all fingers of left hand open.

§External links

• Media related to E at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of E at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of e at Wiktionary