Seven-segment Display Character Representations - Alphabetic Letters

Alphabetic Letters

In addition to the ten digits, seven-segment displays can be used to show letters of the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets including punctuation, but only very few representations are unambiguous and intuitive at the same time.

Also, alphabetic letters, and many other characters, are much clearer and unambiguously shown on the currently ubiquitous and low-priced dot matrix displays as well as on fourteen-segment and sixteen-segment displays. All this obviates the need for seven-segment displays to show letters in all but the most special cases.

One such special case is the display of the letters A–F when denoting the hexadecimal values (digits) 10–15. These are needed on some scientific calculators, and are used with some test displays on electronic equipment. Although there is no official standard, most devices displaying hex digits use the unique forms shown in the leftmost column of the Latin alphabet section below — uppercase A, C, E, and F, and lowercase b and d.

For the remainder of characters, ad hoc and corporate solutions dominate the field of using seven-segment displays to show general words and phrases. Such applications of seven-segment displays are usually not considered essential and are only used for basic notifications on consumer electronics appliances (as is the case of this article's example phrases), and as internal test messages on equipment under development.