Half-width Katakana Nu

It is the Japanese katakana syllable nu in a narrow form. Read it like ヌ; the width and encoding context differ, not the sound. In ordinary Japanese writing, ヌ is the standard full-width form.

The two forms are distinct characters, so changing between them can affect alignment, field limits, validation, or conversion even when the reading stays the same.

Why was half-width katakana made?

It made Japanese text fit into narrow machine cells. In 1969, the Japanese JIS C 6220 standard included a limited katakana set for single-byte computer and telecommunications systems. Narrow kana could share a fixed-width grid with Latin letters; older systems also used separate marks for voiced sounds as part of this space-saving approach.

A 1903 Tokyo Tsukiji type specimen shows that half-width and two-thirds-width kana existed before computers. As full-width kana and kanji systems spread in the 1970s, the narrow forms shifted toward receipts, banking data, address labels, and older interfaces. This character belongs to the JIS X 0201 kana set, and its full-width counterpart is ヌ.

Should I use ﾇ or ヌ?

Use ヌ in ordinary Japanese; use ﾇ when a field or style calls for it. As of 2026, a Japanese Ministry of Health site advises replacing half-width kana with full-width forms. The narrow form can therefore look technical, inherited, or deliberately retro without changing the reading.

A font setting that narrows ヌ does not turn it into ﾇ. In fixed-pitch East Asian fonts, half-width kana takes half an em; proportional fonts and fallback rendering can change the visible spacing.