• ninth letter of the Latin alphabet, third consonant
  • phonetic name: "near-close near-front unrounded vowel"; sound: smile, press the sides of your tongue against your upper molars and vocalize
  • Egyptian hieroglyph was a pair of reeds, or an arm with a hand
  • arm icon adopted by Semites into a curve with two straight lines to create yodh
  • Hebrew yodh is associated with the Latin tern principum, meaning "beginning, foundation, origin"
  • Greeks adopted it as their letter iota (uppercase Ι, lowercase ι); it was their smallest letter, and has come to mean "a tiny amount"
  • 'J' was a variation of 'I' until the 16th century
  • the dot on the lower case 'i' is sometimes called a tittle; this first appeared in the 11th century when scribes used it to help make the letter more distinct
  • in Turkish, dotted and dotless 'i' are separate letters, in both uppercase (I, İ) and lowercase (ı, i)
  • let's not forget the mnemonic device: "I before E except after C"
  • two common French diacritical marks: accent circumflex (î) or umlaut (ï); umlaut appears in English word "naïve"
  • 'I' can be long diphthong (i.e.: "mine") or short (i.e.: "bill"); this split happened during the Great Vowel Shift in the 15th century
  • 'I' became a personal pronoun around 1150, emerging from the German ich
  • most of Emily Dickinson's poems begin with the person pronoun 'I'
  • according to American Health, the less you use the personal pronoun, the lower your risk of heart disease
  • "'I'...how huge a word in that small English mark, the shape of a Grecian pillar." -William H. Gass, The Tunnel
  • 'I' plays an important role in Roman numerals. I = one unit; I with a dash above it = one thousand units. When placed in front of a Roman numeral, it is subtracted (i.e. V = 5, IV = 4); when placed behind, it is added (ie. VI = 6)
  • 'I' is considered the "incomplete" in education
  • associated with verticality, elevation, joy and clarity
  • as a straight line, it is often deemed a phallic symbol
  • its vertical composition unites heaven and earth, can also represent the spinal chord, uniting the head and feet
  • when sung on the note 'A', the 'i' sound acts upon the sixth chakra - the front chakra - located between the eyebrows and often called the third eye. It is associated with the colour indigo.
  • 'I' is the chemical symbol for iodine (#53 on the periodic table), bluish-black in solid form, and blue-violet as a gas (stinky though)
  • in physics, 'I' can be electrical current, moment of inertia or luminous intensity
  • in mathematics, 'I' is imaginary number equal to the square root of -1
  • in astronomy, 'I' is orbital inclination
  • in economics, 'I' is investment, 'i' is interest rate
  • 'I' placed in a circle means "information"
  • abbreviated, 'I' often means international (IBM = International Business Machines, ISBN = International Standard Book Number)
  • phonetic sound, "aye", means "yes" (especially in voting)
  • NATO phonetic alphabet: INDIA
  • 'I-beam' is a metal construction beam/bar/girder with an I-shaped cross section
  • Apple declared the lower case 'i' to stand dually for "internet" and "individual / individuality" when it released the iMac in 1998
  • "The 'I' evokes brilliance, lyricism, the illusory, becoming, rhythm." -Dictionnaire des symboles
  • like a pillar, 'I' is an essential building block of type design; "Almost all the other letters are formed after this letter, although always something has to be added to it or taken away." - Albrecht Dürer, in 1535 treatise on letter design
  • "'I' is the first letter of the alphabet, the first word of language, the first thought of the mind, the first object of affection." - Ambrose Pierce, Collected Writings
  • "'I' is the war machine launching a projectile." -Victor Hugo, French poet & playwright
  • I can also abbreviate current, incisor, independence, institute, interest, island, isle, Italy