Palochka

The palochka or palotchka (Ӏ ӏ; italics: Ӏ ӏ) (Russian: палочка, tr. palochka; IPA: [ˈpɑɫət͡ɕkə], literally "a stick") is a letter in the Cyrillic script. The letter usually has only a capital form, which is also used in lowercase text. The capital form of the palochka often looks like the capital form of the Cyrillic letter soft-dotted I (І і), the capital form of the Latin letter I (I i), and the lowercase form of the Latin letter L (L l).

The letter was introduced during the cyrillization of the North-Caucasian languages in the late 1930s. In order to keep new orthographies compatible with Russian typewriters many of the new alphabets did not contain any letters not found in the Russian alphabet (sounds absent in Russian were marked with digraphs and other letter combinations). The palochka was the only exception, and in practice while typewriting the Arabo-European digit 1 was used instead. In fact, on Russian typewriters this character did not look like digit 1, but rather as a Roman numeral I with serifs. This practice still is common, because the palochka is not present in most standard keyboard layouts (and for some of them not even the soft-dotted I) or common fonts, and so cannot be easily entered or reliably displayed on many computer systems.