Latin small letter ts digraph

ʦ is the voiceless ts affricate. The sound begins with a t-like closure and releases into an s-like hiss without a break; it ends the English word “cats.”

Writing it as ʦ uses one encoded ligature. The Unicode Standard says that choice can show the transcriber treats the affricate as one sound unit, rather than two separate letters.

In 1989, the IPA replaced this ligature with tied t͡s or t͜s.

Which form should you type?

Use t͡s or t͜s for current IPA transcription. Use ʦ when a source, transcription tradition, or data format specifically requires this precomposed character.

ʦ is one character; t͡s and plain ts are separate sequences, even when a font makes their shapes look similar.