Halfwidth Katakana Yo

Same syllable as ヨ — 'yo' — packed into a single byte. Japanese is written partly with syllabaries called kana; katakana is the angular set used mainly for foreign words, and ヨ is its 'yo' (the sound in 'yoga'). In 1969 the JIS C 6220 standard — later renamed JIS X 0201 — packed katakana into one byte each, so it could share a single-byte stream with ASCII on early Japanese machines. That compressed set is today's halfwidth or 'hankaku' kana.

Unicode keeps ﾖ as a separate compatibility code point for ヨ: software can convert between the two forms, but only the original character preserves which width was actually written. 'Halfwidth' names that encoding convention; the width you actually see still depends on the font.

Should I write ﾖ or ヨ?

Write ヨ; use ﾖ only when a field demands halfwidth kana. Normal Japanese input produces fullwidth kana, and the halfwidth set has fallen out of everyday writing. But some systems built on the old encoding still request 半角カナ — older bank, government and corporate systems are the usual examples. As of 2026, Japan's Digital Agency advises services to offer conversion help rather than make people type halfwidth kana themselves.

You may also see whole strings of halfwidth kana as a deliberate retro-digital look, echoing early PCs and feature phones. If a form rejects your kana, check the field's stated character rules — the required width is often spelled out there.