The amount positive or negative electricity deposited on a body. The MKS unit of charge is the Coulomb, while the cgs unit is the electrostatic unit,or esu.The smallest measurable unit of charge is that carried by the electron, where Coulomb or esu.Although quarks carry units of charge of , and times e, this "fractional" charge cannot be directly observed since free quarks apparently do not exist.
It is an unfortunate accident of history that Benjamin Franklin chose to call "positive" the charge opposite that carried by the usual charge carriers (i.e., electrons).