Latin Small Letter H
Often shaping the sound of other consonants rather than standing alone, lowercase 'h' is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet and one of the most common second letters in English digraphs — th, sh, ch, ph, wh, and gh each rely on it to produce sounds often different from the letters' usual individual values. It sits at ASCII code point 104 (0x68), 32 above its uppercase counterpart 'H' at 72 (0x48), maintaining the single-bit case offset (bit 5) shared by all ASCII A–Z / a–z pairs. In typical English corpora it accounts for roughly 6.1 % of characters, a frequency influenced in part by its presence in common function words such as 'the', 'that', and 'this'.
Technical Details
Code Example
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// Header file include#include <stdio.h> // Standard I/O header#include "myapp.h" // Custom header file
Common Usage
Prolific digraph partner: English depends on 'h' to form consonant digraphs — th, sh, ch, ph, wh, gh — more than most other letters. This digraph role is a primary reason 'h' ranks among the more common consonants despite its base sound (the glottal fricative /h/) being silent in many English words (hour, honest, heir).
Printf length modifier: In C-family printf-style formatting, 'h' serves as a length modifier rather than a conversion specifier — %hd and %hu format short int and unsigned short respectively, while %hh narrows further to a single byte (char). This modifier role is distinct from standalone specifiers like %d or %f.
Regex horizontal whitespace: In PCRE and Perl, \h matches horizontal whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, and similar), complementing \v for vertical whitespace. This shorthand is engine-specific and not available in all regex flavors — notably absent from standard JavaScript RegExp.
Diacritical variants: ħ (stroke) is a distinct letter in Maltese representing a pharyngeal fricative, ḥ (dot below) appears in transliteration systems for Arabic, Hebrew, and Sanskrit (IAST), and ḫ (breve below) is used in transliterations of Hittite and Egyptian — giving 'h' a modest but specialized diacritical family.
Prolific digraph partner: English depends on 'h' to form consonant digraphs — th, sh, ch, ph, wh, gh — more than most other letters. This digraph role is a primary reason 'h' ranks among the more common consonants despite its base sound (the glottal fricative /h/) being silent in many English words (hour, honest, heir).
Printf length modifier: In C-family printf-style formatting, 'h' serves as a length modifier rather than a conversion specifier — %hd and %hu format short int and unsigned short respectively, while %hh narrows further to a single byte (char). This modifier role is distinct from standalone specifiers like %d or %f.
Regex horizontal whitespace: In PCRE and Perl, \h matches horizontal whitespace characters (spaces, tabs, and similar), complementing \v for vertical whitespace. This shorthand is engine-specific and not available in all regex flavors — notably absent from standard JavaScript RegExp.
Diacritical variants: ħ (stroke) is a distinct letter in Maltese representing a pharyngeal fricative, ḥ (dot below) appears in transliteration systems for Arabic, Hebrew, and Sanskrit (IAST), and ḫ (breve below) is used in transliterations of Hittite and Egyptian — giving 'h' a modest but specialized diacritical family.