History of Q Mansour Magda   Greek Qoppa Etruscan Q Phoenician qoph Egyptian hieroglyph   wj

The History of Q:   'Q' started its life as the Phoenician letter 'Qoph', the same Arabic letter 'Qaph', a word meaning the back of the head where it is connected to the neck, and represented by a simplified shape of a head and neck Q in Latin came from the letter koppa in ancient Greek (which looks like a vertical tennis racket) - hence the shape. In Latin, Q was used with V to make the sound kw.

In old English people used cw for the same sound, but after the Norman Conquest in 1066, it switched to qu. So you need the u to make the double sound "kw". Q without U is used to represent sounds not often found in English but typical in Semitic languages. (Loan words such as Quran and Iraq are examples of Q’s with the sound of/k/ Q’s shape may have its origin in the Egyptian hieroglyph for a cord of wool, pronounced “qaw.” The symbol of a circle with a descending line was used in the Greek Koppa and is similar to the shape of the basic modern Latin character .

In this example from a 15th century Italian book hand, q is very neat and rounded, with a tiny kink at the bottom of the descender.

This 16th century example dates from after the advent of printing and has produced a neat q with a surfed foot.

The letter q has essentially the same form through the middle ages, although the method of producing that general shape is variable. It often looks, to our eyes, as if the descender is curling the wrong way.