U+FF9F "゚" Halfwidth Katakana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+FF9F "゚" Halfwidth Katakana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark is a typographical symbol used primarily in Japanese writing to indicate a semi-voiced pronunciation, notably transforming the 'h' sound series into 'p' sounds (e.g., ハ to パ) when placed after a halfwidth katakana character. It represents a halfwidth version of the standard fullwidth handakuten (゜) and is encoded specifically for compatibility with legacy text systems and certain digital fonts that require a narrower character width. This character is part of the halfwidth katakana block in Unicode, which was developed to support older computer encoding standards like Shift JIS, allowing for efficient display in constrained terminal or monospaced environments without altering the inherent phonetic function of the mark.

General Properties

Code Point U+FF9F
Version Added 1.1
Name Halfwidth Katakana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark
Block Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms
General Category Modifier Letter
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Left To Right
Decomposition Type Narrow
Decomposition Mapping "゚" U+309A Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ゚
HTML Hex Encoding ゚
UTF-8 Encoding 0xEF 0xBE 0x9F
UTF-16 Encoding 0xFF9F
UTF-32 Encoding 0x0000FF9F
C/C++/Java Escape \uff9f

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check Yes
NFD Quick Check Yes
Numeric Type None
Numeric Value NaN
Line Break Nonstarter
East Asian Width Halfwidth
Case Ignorable Yes
Changes When NFKC Casefolded Yes
NFKC Casefold "゚" U+309A Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark
NFKC Simple Casefold "゚" U+309A Combining Katakana-Hiragana Semi-Voiced Sound Mark
Script Common
Script Extensions Hiragana Katakana
Indic Syllabic Category Other
Indic Conjunct Break Extend
ID Start Yes
ID Continue Yes
XID Continue Yes
Diacritic Yes
Alphabetic Yes
Vertical Orientation Rotated
Grapheme Extend Yes
Other Grapheme Extend Yes
Grapheme Cluster Break Extend
Word Break Extend
Sentence Break Extend