U may refer to any of the following:
U is chat slang often used in chat as an abbreviated form of the word “you.” For example, ICU is an abbreviation for “I see you.”
In programs dealing with text, like a word processor, an icon of a “U” may be shown to represent the underline.
U is a keyboard key used with the keyboard shortcuts Alt+U, Command+U, and Ctrl+U.
With regular expressions, “U” is a regular expression flag to do an ungreedy match. When used with a forward slash in a regular expression, a lowercase “\u” capitalizes (uppercases) the first letter in a match, and an uppercase “\U” capitalizes all letters matched.
With Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet programs, “U” is the twenty-first column of a spreadsheet. To reference the first cell in the column, you’d use “U1.”
In Adobe Photoshop, U is a shortcut to select the shape tools. Holding down the Shift while pressing U cycles through all options.
In the phonetic alphabet, “U” is often pronounced as “uniform.”
With days of the week, U is an abbreviation for Sunday when only one character space is available.
U is the twenty-first letter of the English alphabet. The letter “U” comes after “T” and is followed by the letter “V.” To create a capitalized “U,” press Shift and U at the same time.
With U.S. QWERTY keyboards, the “U” key is on the top row, to the right of “Y” and left of the “I” key. See our keyboard page for a visual example of all keyboard keys.
Chat terms, Computer abbreviations, Letter
If the “U” key is not working on the keyboard, see: Some keys on my computer keyboard aren’t working.
In ASCII, the uppercase “U” is “085” in decimal (01010101 in binary). The lowercase “u” is “117” in decimal (01110101 in binary).
Doing the Alt code Alt+85 creates a capital “U” and Alt+117 creates a lowercase “u” character.
The number 8 on a phone keypad is used to create an “U” on a US phone.
Related information
- See our U terms for a full listing of computer terms starting with “U.”
- Computer people and pioneers with “U” first names.
