U+028D "ʍ" Latin Small Letter Turned W Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ʍ
U+028D "ʍ" Latin Small Letter Turned W is a phonetic symbol primarily used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the voiceless labial-velar approximant, a sound found in some dialects of English in words like "which" or "whine" when pronounced without the "h" sound, differing from the voiced "w." This character visually resembles an upside-down lowercase "w" and is distinct from similar-looking symbols; it also appears in orthographies for certain Indigenous languages of North America to denote a voiceless or breathy variation of the "w" sound. Its inclusion in the Unicode standard ensures consistent representation across digital platforms for linguistic transcription and documentation.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+028D |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Latin Small Letter Turned W |
| Block | IPA Extensions |
| General Category | Lowercase Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ʍ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ʍ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xCA 0x8D |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x028D |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x0000028D |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u028d |