P
In modern Latin alphabet “P” serves as the 16th letter which is pronounced a with the sound /pi:/. Frequency of P’s usage in words among all other alphabet is 1.929%.
Linguistic usage
The Letter “P” acts as a voiceless bilabial plosive in English and in many of the European languages. In
Arabic speakers pronounce /p/ as /b/.
Pictorial representations of “P” in some common languages
Phoenician( P) 
Archaic Greek (Pi) 
Etruscan
Latin P 
Roman
Pictorial representations of from the medieval ages
This letter had gone through very little changes in their shape during several centuries. Variants were formed by considering whether the loop resides at the top was slightly opened or closed. Minuscule Scripts are the one which is composed of only small case letters.
This picture shows the Old Roman square capital representation of “p”
This one is from the rustic capital script with solid foot and a narrow loop.
This uncial representation of “P” has closed loops at the top with the stroke in its upright direction.
In this representation of new roman cursive the small case of “p” has drawn with a single curled line
In the pre-Carolingian minuscule scripts, the variant of “p” is formed on their length.
Upper loop is always closed except in some cases. Minuscule script is a script that contains only small cases.
This representation of “p” is from 6th century half uncial which is written with a very long straight descender and a loop seems slightly closed.
This representation of “p” is from the specialized book script known as carbie ab.
This representation of 8th century’s old northern Italian book hand shows p with a single curled line.
This representation of “p” is belongs to Merovingian minuscule. In which p is written more formally with fully closed loop on the top.
This form of “p” is derived from Merovingian minuscule popularly called as Luxeuil minuscule .
In this representation of Visigothic script “ p” is simple and neatly written.
This picture shows the “p” in insular half uncial script Which have nearly closed loop
This representation is from 10th century’s insular minuscule which has a very short descender, and the loop is normally closed.
Merovingian chancery script representation of “p” .
old curialis representation of “p”.
This representation shows “p” from the Beneventan minuscule. Here” p” has written with a closed loop and it seems to have a medium level descender.
Variance of Caroline minuscule .
12th century’s monastic charter representation of “p”.
12th century’s Diplomatic minuscule.
In all official Gothic book hands, “p” has maintained a similar form as in Caroline minuscule form.
Related Letters
| Language | Character |
| Greek letter pi | Π π |
| Cyrillic letter Pe | П п |
| Greek letter Rho | Ρ ρ/ϱ |
| Cyrillic letter Er | Р р |
| Hebrew letter Pe | פ ף |
| Latin letter Thorn | Þ þ |
| Latin letter Wynn | Ƿ ƿ |
| circled Latin letter P | Ⓟ ⓟ |
Character Encoding
The following table specifies value of “P” in some character Encodings.
Character Latin Latin
encoding capital letter P small letter P
Decimal hex Decimal hex
Unicode 80 0050 112 0070
ASCII 80 5 0 112 72
UTF-8 80 50 112 72
EBCDIC family 215 D7 151 97
What Does “P” Stand for in various fields?
General usage
P serves as a symbol for Penny ( Currency)
When P is used on maps, it represents a Parking area.
Science
P is a symbol representing Proline which is an amino acid (chemistry).
P is the symbol representing Phosphorus (chemistry element)
P is the symbol representing the momentum in Physics.
P denotes the power (physics)
Technology
P stands for the html tag <p> which indicates the starting of paragraphs