The letter B is the second letter of the modern Latin alphabet.

History

The letter B probably started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-semitic alphabet.

Egyptian hieroglyphic house	Proto-semitic house	Phoenician beth	Greek beta	Etruscan B	Roman B

By 1500 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the basis for all later forms, which appeared in both the angular and more rounded forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the Hebrew beth.

When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they changed its name to beta and turned the letter upside-down and later added a second loop. In earlier Greek inscriptions, the letter faces to the left, but in the Greek alphabet of later times it faces to the right, although there continued to be variations between pointed and rounded loops.

The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to what is now Italy and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin, and the resulting letter, with rounded loops, has been preserved in the modern Latin alphabet used to write many languages, including English.

Typography

The modern lowercase letter b derives from later Roman times, when scribes began omitting the upper loop of the capital.

Blackletter B	Uncial B
Modern Roman B	Modern Italic B	Modern Script B

The letter B should not be confused with the visually similar German ess-tsett.

Usage

In English, the letter b by itself usual denotes the voiced bilabial plosive (IPA /b/), as in bib, and it sometimes is "silent", as in debt or comb.

In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter b denotes the voiced bilabial plosive (IPA /b/), although in Spanish, in medial position it denotes the voiced bilabial fricative (IPA /β/). However, in Estonian and in Chinese transcription, B is not voiced, and is contrasted to P, which is a geminate /pp/ in Estonian and the aspirate /p^h/ in Chinese.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA, letter b denotes the voiced bilabial plosive. Variants of the letter b denote related bilabial consonants, like voiced bilabial implosive and the bilabial trill. In X-SAMPA, capital B denotes the voiced bilabial fricative.

Alternate representations

Bravo represents the letter B in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter B is DahDitDitDit: - · · ·

In Braille the letter B is represented as ⠃ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

X.
X.
..

Computing

In Unicode the capital B is codepoint U+0042 and the lowercase b is U+0062.

The ASCII code for capital B is 66 and for lowercase b is 98; or in binary 01000010 and 01100010, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital B is 194 and for lowercase b is 130.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "B" and "b" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for B

• As a prefix B indicates second rate (where A is first/top rate) e.g. B-movie, B-team.

• In chemistry, B is the symbol for the element boron.
• In chess, B is a notation symbol for the bishop piece.
• In the RGB color model, B stands for the color blue.
• In computing,
  • b is an abbreviation for bit, and B is an abbreviation for byte.
  • B is the name of two programming languages, see: B programming language and B specification language.
  • <b> is an HTML tag for marking boldface type.
• In education, B is a "good" grade, one below the top grade of A.
• In electrical engineering,
  • B is the anode (plate) power supply (originally a battery) of vacuum tube circuitry.
  • B is the symbol for susceptance, the inverse of reactance.
• In English slang, B is a euphemism for bastard or bitch.
• In financial securities, B is the stock symbol for Barnes Group Inc..
• In hockey, the Boston Bruins are sometimes referred to as the "Bs" because of the letter B on the front of their jerseys.
• In international licence plate codes, B stands for Belgium.
• In international paper sizes, B is a series of sizes with an aspect ratio of roughly 70% width to height. The B series is a scaled version of the A series.
• In mathematics,
  • B is often used as a digit meaning eleven in hexadecimal and other positional numeral systems with a radix of 12 or greater.
  • B in Blackboard bold notation represents Ball (mathematics).
  • B may denote Brun's constant, which roughly equals 1.902160583104.
• In medicine, B is one of the human blood types.
• In music,
  • B is a note.
  • B, or "B-side", is the second or reverse side of a vinyl record; also called the flip side.
• In photography, B is a shutter speed.
• In physics,
  • The vector B represents the magnetic field.
  • The unit B stands for Bel.
  • The bottom quark is represented with small "b", the B meson is represented with capital "B".
• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, B stands for Nova Scotia.
  • In the United Kingdom, B stands for Birmingham.
• In radiocommunication, B is the ITU prefix allocated to China.
• In rail transport, B is the UIC classification for the locomotive wheel arrangement known as 0-4-0 in the Whyte notation; a locomotive with two powered axles (and thus four wheels) in which the axles are linked by gearing or side rods.

Two-letter combinations starting with B:

• BA BB BC BD BE BF BG BH BI BJ BK BL BM BN BO BP BQ BR BS BT BU BV BW BX BY BZ

Letter-digit combinations starting with B:

• B0 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 B8 B9