 Ordinary reduction of an elliptic curve

A good reduction in characteristic $p$ is ordinary when the geometric $p$-torsion has $p$ points, equivalently its formal group of an elliptic curve has height one. For a CM elliptic curve, a good prime split in its CM field is ordinary. One of the two roots of $X^2-a_{p}X+p$ is a $p$-adic unit, enabling the bounded ordinary p-adic L-function.