What ̥ means
In IPA, it marks one sound as voiceless.
In n̥, m̥, or l̥, the consonant is pronounced without vocal-cord vibration.
A 1855 account of Lepsius’s alphabet uses the ring below r and l when either forms a syllable. The alphabet was designed to represent foreign scripts and unwritten languages with Latin letters. The IPA’s first alphabet dates to 1888; its charts call the mark “breath” in 1926 and “voicelessness (breath)” in 1928 and 1949.
why does r̥ mean something different?
In some systems, r can form a syllable by itself.
Some Latin-letter spellings of South Asian languages and some notation for reconstructed Indo-European languages use r̥ for an r that forms a syllable without a separate vowel. IPA instead reads it as voiceless r; the notation tells you which.
Madurese spelling also uses the mark, so the IPA reading does not automatically carry over.
how do I type the ring below?
Put the base letter first, then add U+0325.
This is a nonspacing combining mark: entered first, it may appear invisible or detached. In Praat, phonetics software, type \0v after the base; the SIL IPA Keyboard uses %.
Fonts can position it poorly around descenders or other marks, so check the text in its final typeface.
It belongs to phonetic or transliteration notation, not expressive punctuation.
Check the system before calling r̥ “voiceless”; it can mark a syllabic r.
Don't confuse it with
2Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1why does my under-ring look misplaced?
Placement depends on the base letter and font; a descender can crowd the mark. A font with IPA support may position it better.
How to type ̥
̥\0325Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.