What ⸚ means
It marks a changed stem vowel plus a shortened plural ending.
In German, Buch means “book”; Buch, ⸚er expands to Bücher (“books”), adding -er and changing u to ü.
German dictionaries use it; other dictionaries influenced by German lexicography may too. A 2007 proposal cites a 1993 Icelandic–German dictionary.
Precise dictionary shorthand; opaque outside inflection entries.
A plain hyphen loses the umlaut instruction.
Don't confuse it with
1-̈
Two characters: a hyphen plus combining diaeresis. A 2015 discussion reports weak font support and differently placed dots.
Questions 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.
How to type ⸚
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2E1A, then Alt+X to get ⸚.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “hyphen with diaeresis”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2e1a, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⸚CSS
\2E1AHow to type umlaut over dash
Word for Windows in 2026: enter `2E1A` then press `Alt+X`.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⸚
HTML hex
⸚
CSS content
content: "\2E1A";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%B8%9A
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.