Hebrew Letters & Symbols

The Hebrew alphabet, the alef-bet, has 22 letters, all consonants, written from right to left: א alef, ב bet, ג gimel, ד dalet, ה he, ו vav, ז zayin, ח ḥet, ט tet, י yod, כ kaf, ל lamed, מ mem, נ nun, ס samekh, ע ayin, פ pe, צ tsadi, ק qof, ר resh, ש shin, ת tav. There are no capital letters: a name, the start of a sentence and a headline all use the same shapes.

Five letters change shape at the end of a word: כ → ך, מ → ם, נ → ן, פ → ף and צ → ץ. Schoolchildren learn them with the made-up word kamnapats (כמנפ״ץ). A final letter is the same letter, not an extra one, so the alphabet still counts 22; Unicode gives each final form its own code, which is why there are 27 letters to copy. Compare מלך (melekh, king) and שלום (shalom): the end of each word uses the final form.

Some letters look alike and are easy to swap when copying: ב and כ, ג and נ, ד and ר, ה and ח and ת, ו and ז and ן, ס and ם, ע and צ. The square letters on this page are the print form; Israelis write by hand in a rounded cursive script that looks quite different but is the same alphabet, so a cursive Hebrew font shows these very characters in handwriting style.

Final letters and dotted letters: ך ם ן ף ץ, בּ כּ פּ, שׁ שׂ

Three letters change their sound when a dot, the dagesh, sits inside them: בּ is b and ב is v, כּ is k and כ is kh (like the ch in Bach), פּ is p and פ is f. That is why one root gives כתב (katav, he wrote) and מכתב (mikhtav, a letter). The dagesh can also mark an old consonant doubling; modern Israeli speech no longer pronounces that lengthening.

ש is two letters in one shape: with a dot on the upper right, שׁ shin, it says sh as in שָׁלוֹם (shalom); with the dot on the upper left, שׂ sin, it says s as in שָׂרָה (Sarah). ו vav is v, but וּ (shuruk) is the vowel u and וֹ (ḥolam male) is the vowel o.

The ready-made dotted letters in the grid are Unicode presentation forms. They copy and display well, but in text you type yourself the usual way is the plain letter followed by the mark (ב then ּ), which is what Hebrew keyboards produce and what Unicode normalization turns the ready-made forms into.

Hebrew vowels: the nikud chart

Everyday Hebrew, in newspapers, on signs and in text messages, is written without vowel marks; readers know the words, and the letters ו and י are added as vowel helpers to make the spelling clearer. The vowel points, nikud (ניקוד), are small dots and dashes under, over or inside the letters, used in children's books, poetry, prayer books, the Bible, learners' texts and wherever a word could be misread.

The main points: pataḥ ַ and qamats ָ for a, tsere ֵ and segol ֶ for e, ḥiriq ִ for i, ḥolam ֹ for o, qubuts ֻ and the dotted vav וּ for u. Shva ְ is either silent or a very short e. The ḥataf signs ֲ ֱ ֳ are shortened a, e and o, used mostly under the throat letters א ה ח ע. The qamats qatan ׇ is the qamats read as o, as in כׇּל (kol, all); most texts use the ordinary qamats ָ for both.

Modern Hebrew pronounces pataḥ and qamats alike, and tsere and segol alike; the separate signs come from older pronunciation and grammar. Bible texts also carry cantillation marks, the teʿamim that tell a reader how to chant each verse; Unicode encodes them too, from U+0591 to U+05AF.

Hebrew punctuation, Hebrew numbers and the shekel sign ₪

Hebrew uses the same full stop, comma, question mark and quotation marks as English, plus several marks of its own. The maqaf ־ is the Hebrew hyphen, set high at the letter tops. The geresh ׳ marks abbreviations and sounds Hebrew borrowed: ג׳ is j as in ג׳ירפה (giraffe), צ׳ is ch as in צ׳יפס (chips), ז׳ is the zh of ז׳קט (jacket). The gershayim ״ marks acronyms, such as צה״ל (Tzahal, the Israel Defense Forces) and ארה״ב (the USA). Use ׳ and ״ rather than the apostrophe and the double quote, which can flip around in right-to-left text. Sof pasuq ׃ ends a verse in printed Bibles.

Hebrew writes everyday numbers with 0–9, but the letters themselves have number values, known as gematria: א to ט are 1–9, י to צ are 10–90, ק ר ש ת are 100–400. Letter numbers are used for dates in the Jewish calendar, chapters, lists and school grades; a geresh marks a single letter (ה׳ = 5) and gershayim go before the last letter of a longer one. The Jewish year 5787, which began in September 2026, is written ה׳תשפ״ז or simply תשפ״ז (400 + 300 + 80 + 7).

Israel's currency is the new shekel, sign ₪ (U+20AA), code ILS, often written NIS in English and ש״ח (shekel ḥadash) in Hebrew. In Hebrew text the sign usually follows the number, 50 ₪; English text tends to put it first, ₪50. The sign is the first letters of shekel ḥadash, ש and ח, drawn into one.

How to type Hebrew letters and vowels

Add Hebrew as a keyboard language (Windows: Settings, Time & language, Language & region; Mac: System Settings, Keyboard, Input Sources) and switch with Windows + Space or the input menu. The standard Israeli layout puts Hebrew letters on the same keys as Latin ones: ש on A, ד on S, ג on D, כ on F, ע on G, י on H, ח on J, ל on K, ק on E, ר on R, א on T, ו on U, פ on P, ב on C, ה on V, נ on B, מ on N, צ on M. Typing שלום on an English keyboard with the Hebrew layout on is A, K, U, O; the final ם is its own key, on O. Hebrew keyboard stickers or the on-screen keyboard show the rest. Mac also offers a Hebrew – QWERTY layout that places letters by sound.

For vowel points, Windows' Hebrew (Standard) layout has them on extra key combinations, which the on-screen keyboard shows; in Microsoft Word on Windows you can also type a code and press Alt+X (05B8 Alt+X gives a qamats ָ, 20AA Alt+X gives ₪). On phones, the Hebrew keyboards in Gboard and on iPhone type letters; for nikud use a keyboard with vowel support or copy the marks from this page. Paste a vowel right after its letter.

On the web, mark Hebrew text with dir="rtl" and lang="he" so it lines up and reads correctly; letters can also be written as entities, א for א and ₪ for ₪. If Hebrew comes out backwards in a design program, turn on its right-to-left or Middle Eastern text setting rather than typing the word in reverse, and have a Hebrew reader check any text meant for a tattoo or a print.

Where Hebrew is spoken, and its related alphabets

Hebrew is the main language of Israel 🇮🇱. CLDR estimates around 9.4 million literate, functional Hebrew users in Israel, and Wikipedia gives about 5 million native and 9 million total speakers (2018 figures). Outside Israel there are sizeable communities of speakers in the United States, where about 220,000 people spoke Hebrew at home in 2021, and in Canada, where the 2021 census counted some 83,000 people able to speak it. Ancient Hebrew stayed alive for some two thousand years as the language of prayer, the Bible and scholarship before it was revived as an everyday spoken language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The same alphabet writes Yiddish, which uses extra ligatures such as װ ױ ײ and spells out its vowels, and Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). Hebrew is a Semitic language, closely related to Aramaic and other Canaanite languages such as Phoenician; Arabic is more distantly related. The square Hebrew letters grew out of the Aramaic script, while the older Paleo-Hebrew letters, which Unicode encodes together with Phoenician, are cousins of the alphabet that became Greek and Latin. For the country's emoji and symbols, see the Israel collection.

A few symbols go with Hebrew and Jewish life: the Star of David ✡️ (magen david), the menorah 🕎 lit at Hanukkah, the synagogue 🕍, the scroll 📜 and the hamsa 🪬, a hand-shaped amulet hung for protection. Mathematicians borrowed the letters too: ℵ (aleph), ℶ, ℷ and ℸ are separate letterlike symbols for the sizes of infinite sets.