P, the Sütterlin letter p

History

The letter P is the 16th letter of the German alphabet. Phonetically, it represents a voiceless bilabial plosive /p/, found in Germanic words and loanwords.

Sütterlin lowercase p has a straight, vertical descender dropping below the baseline and a round circular bowl in the middle zone. Capital P is written with an upright vertical stroke and a clean, rounded upper bowl.

In historical German church registers, p appears in clerical titles and religious roles such as 'Pfarrer' (pastor), 'Pate' (godparent), 'Pfarrei' (parish), and 'Proklamation' (banns of marriage). Its descender makes it readily visible.

P may go back to a Proto-Sinaitic throwing stick,^[1] though the literature accepts that origin only in part.^[2] What is certain is a Phoenician letter named pe, mouth.^[3] The uprights of Greek pi, at first of different lengths, were made equal by the classical alphabet,^[4] and Latin took P in its Etruscan form and mirrored it when the writing direction changed to left to right.^[5]