Halfwidth Katakana Letter No

It represents the same Japanese syllable as ノ, in halfwidth form.

Halfwidth katakana, also called hankaku kana, uses narrow forms that take less horizontal space. In a katakana word, ﾉ stands for the Japanese syllable no, pronounced with a steady o rather than the English diphthong in “no.”

Japan standardized the computer-era form in 1969 in JIS C 6220, a one-byte character code that included katakana. The narrow form let katakana fit fixed one-byte slots; later mixed-width encodings and Unicode retained it so older text could be converted and restored with its width distinction intact.

When should I use ﾉ instead of ノ?

Use ﾉ when a field or older text calls for halfwidth kana.

For ordinary Japanese text, ノ is the safer default. Use ﾉ when a field requires halfwidth characters, when preserving older data, or when a narrow display or deliberate Japanese text style calls for it.

A 2011 Unicode discussion cited compact mobile screens as one reason halfwidth kana remained useful: narrower character cells fit more text. Compatibility normalization such as NFKC converts ﾉ to ノ, removing the width distinction.

How do I type halfwidth katakana?

Switch your Japanese input method to halfwidth Katakana, then enter the reading.

Exact steps depend on the input method. The entries below describe documented options for Windows and macOS.