What ᴸ means
In UPA, ᴸ marks a very short L-like sound. Raised letters in this notation mark very brief sounds, so read ᴸ as part of the transcription rather than as ordinary superscript styling.
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) first appeared in print in 1901 as a detailed way to record languages in the Uralic family and compare them to reconstruct earlier forms. The system was revised in the 1970s.
Unicode modifier letters can affect neighboring characters, and their role depends on the notation around them. Here, UPA gives ᴸ a specific short-sound reading. Its raised form is a distinct character, not styling applied to ordinary L.
Is ᴸ the same as ᶫ?
No; use ᴸ in UPA.
Unicode guidance specifies ᴸ for UPA, not ᶫ. Their raised shapes are similar, but they are not interchangeable in this transcription system.
Technical phonetic notation; out of place in ordinary prose.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ᴸ 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 ᴸ
ᴸ\1D38Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.