U+FF69 "ｩ" Halfwidth Katakana Letter Small U Unicode Character

U+FF69 "ｩ" Halfwidth Katakana Letter Small U is a typographic variant of the standard katakana character used primarily in Japanese writing, specifically representing a smaller or "halfwidth" version of the small u syllable within the halfwidth katakana block of Unicode. Unlike fullwidth characters that occupy a standard character cell width, this character is designed to be half as wide, making it suitable for integration into legacy computing environments or fixed-width text systems where space efficiency is important. It is used as a phonetic component in Japanese orthography, often appearing in borrowed words or for subtle distinctions in pronunciation, though its small form indicates a muted or shortened vowel sound.

General Properties

Code Point	U+FF69
Version Added	1.1
Name	Halfwidth Katakana Letter Small U
Block	Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms
General Category	Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class	Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class	Left To Right
Decomposition Type	Narrow
Decomposition Mapping	"ゥ" U+30A5 Katakana Letter Small U

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding	ｩ
HTML Hex Encoding	ｩ
UTF-8 Encoding	0xEF 0xBD 0xA9
UTF-16 Encoding	0xFF69
UTF-32 Encoding	0x0000FF69
C/C++/Java Escape	\uff69

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check	Yes
NFD Quick Check	Yes
Numeric Type	None
Numeric Value	NaN
Line Break	Conditional Japanese Starter
East Asian Width	Halfwidth
Changes When NFKC Casefolded	Yes
NFKC Casefold	"ゥ" U+30A5 Katakana Letter Small U
NFKC Simple Casefold	"ゥ" U+30A5 Katakana Letter Small U
Script	Katakana
Script Extensions	Katakana
Indic Syllabic Category	Other
ID Start	Yes
XID Start	Yes
ID Continue	Yes
XID Continue	Yes
Alphabetic	Yes
Vertical Orientation	Rotated
Grapheme Base	Yes
Grapheme Cluster Break	Other
Word Break	Katakana
Sentence Break	OLetter