What ͍ means
It marks the preceding sound as made with the lips spread sideways. In phonetic notation, s͍ says the s sound is made with spread lips. This labial-spreading diacritic records lip posture, not a separate sound.
A 1990 paper introduced the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet (ExtIPA), extra marks for detailed speech transcription. A 1994 manual for TIPA, a LaTeX phonetics typesetting system, lists this mark for labial spreading. The 2021 ExtIPA chart keeps that label.
How do I type the spread-lips mark?
Attach it directly after the sound it modifies. Write a sequence such as s͍ with no space. On its own, the combining mark may appear detached or with a dotted circle because it needs a base letter.
A font or layout engine may move or omit an uncommon combination. If the lower mark clashes with a descender or another lower diacritic, the related ⃡ places the arrow above instead.
Specialist phonetic notation, including detailed speech and clinical transcription.
Alone, read it as an incomplete phonetic sequence, not a reaction.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does ͍ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find ͍
- Search it as
- ExtIPA · IPA labial spreading · labial spreading mark · spread-lips diacritic · phonetic combining mark
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
͍\034Dextra option, then write \spreadlips{s}.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.