U+30FC "ー" Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ー
U+30FC "ー" Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark is a typographic symbol used in the Japanese writing system to indicate a long vowel sound in both katakana and hiragana text. It is a horizontal line that follows a syllable to extend its vowel sound, such as in "カード" (kaado, meaning card) or "メール" (meeru, meaning email). Unlike Western punctuation, this character is considered a legitimate part of the written word, not merely a dash or hyphen, and it is rendered as a single, continuous line that aligns with the direction of the text, whether horizontal or vertical. Its inclusion in Unicode ensures consistent representation across digital platforms for Japanese language content.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+30FC |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Katakana-Hiragana Prolonged Sound Mark |
| Block | Katakana |
| General Category | Modifier Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ー |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ー |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x83 0xBC |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x30FC |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x000030FC |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u30fc |