What ࣸ means
It marks a vowel; the writing convention decides which one.
In Wolofal, ࣸ marks the pure “o” sound, like the vowel in Spanish sol. A Guinean Susu description instead treats it like a damma, the small Arabic vowel mark for a short “u” sound.
The wider arrowhead-mark family extends Arabic writing for African languages, adding signs for local vowel contrasts. Dotted arrowhead forms appear in Maninka material from 1932 and Fula of Macina material from 1934. A 2010 Unicode proposal grouped left and right, above and below, dotted, and doubled arrowhead signs.
How do I type and place ࣸ?
Put it after the letter it modifies.
For a word-initial Wolofal o, attach it to the Arabic letter alef (ا); for a long o, follow it with the Arabic letter waw (و). In code, ࣸ is the HTML reference and \u08F8 is the JavaScript/JSON escape. Shown alone, it may sit on a dotted circle, a placeholder showing where a combining mark attaches.
Specialist vowel mark: follow the writing convention of the language using it.
Do not assign its sound from the arrowhead shape alone.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsDon't confuse it with
3Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does ࣸ show a dotted circle by itself?
The dotted circle is a placeholder in reference charts. It shows where a combining mark attaches and is not part of ࣸ.
How to type ࣸ
ࣸ\08F8Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.