What ₖ means
It marks the influence of a sound before or after k.
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet is a system for writing sounds in Uralic languages. Co-articulation means two speech sounds are made together, with one affecting the other.
Technical in phonetic transcription; outside it, an index depends on context.
Do not treat its lowered position as decoration in transcription.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does ₖ 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 ₖ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2096, then Alt+X to get ₖ.
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 “latin subscript small letter k”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2096, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ₖCSS
\2096HTML
To type ₖ in HTML, use `ₖ`; `<sub>k</sub>` changes layout only.
Normalization
NFKC maps ₖ to k; avoid it when that distinction matters.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ₖ
HTML hex
ₖ
CSS content
content: "\2096";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%82%96
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.