The third letter of the English alphabet is C.
C occupies position 3 in the modern English alphabet, following A and B and preceding D. Its English name is “cee,” and it has distinct uppercase and lowercase forms: C and c.
The letter comes from the Latin alphabet, where it developed from an adapted form of the Greek letter gamma. In early Latin writing, C could represent both the sounds now associated with K and G. Around the third century BCE, Romans introduced a modified letter, G, to represent the voiced sound more clearly, leaving C primarily associated with K and later with several other sounds.
English pronunciation makes C a frequent source of confusion. It usually has a hard sound like K before a, o, u, or a consonant, as in “cat” and “class.” It often has a soft sound like S before e, i, or y, as in “cell,” “city,” and “cycle.”
C also has other roles: in Roman numerals it means 100, and in hexadecimal notation it represents the decimal number 12.