G-is the seventh letter of the Basic Latin alphabet of ISO.

The modern small letter "g" has two printing variants: single (sometimes open ended) "opentail g.svg" and double (sometimes circular) "looptail g.svg". The single layer form is formed by raising the serif that distinguishes it from "C" to the top of the loop, thus closing the loop, and then extending the vertical stroke down and left. The development of the double-layer form (g) is similar, except that some gorgeous forms then extend the tail to the right and then to the left, forming a closed bowl or ring. The part initially extending to the left is absorbed into the upper closed bowl. When printing is converted to "Romanesque," the two-tier version becomes popular because the tail is actually shorter, so more lines can be placed on the page. In the double-layer version, the smaller upstroke in the upper right corner, usually terminated by a sphere, is called the "ear.".

Usually, the two forms are complementary, but sometimes differences are used to provide contrast. In the international phonetic alphabet, the opening g always represents the voice burst with voice, and G is different from G, and from 1895 to 1900, it represents the fricative with voice. In 1948, the Council of the International Phonetic Association regarded g and G as printed equivalents. And reaffirmed that decision in 1993. In the 1949 principles of the International Phonetic Association, it was suggested that G should be used in the language instead of the plosives, while in G, G should be used preferentially to distinguish two languages (such as Russian), which has never been popular. The 1999 Manual of the International Phonetic Association, the successor of the principles, abandoned the proposal and considered both shapes to be acceptable variants.

Wong et al. (2018) found that native English speakers were barely aware of looptail 'g' (looptail g.svg). They wrote: "despite repeated inquiries and being directly told that G has two lowercase printing forms, nearly half of the participants failed to disclose any knowledge about the ring tail 'g', while only one of the 38 participants was able to write the ring tail 'g' correctly."