What ˓ means
It marks less lip rounding on the sound before it.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system for writing speech sounds. This half-ring changes how a preceding sound is pronounced; it does not represent a sound by itself.
IPA began as a tool for language teaching and expanded into a convention used in linguistics, speech science and clinical work. This mark signals a technical pronunciation instruction.
Why is this mark different from ?
They mark the same lip setting but behave differently in text.
˓ and mark less lip rounding, but combines below a base; ˓ occupies a separate place after it. The dotted circle shows where the combining mark attaches; it is not part of the mark itself.
Follow the notation standard you are using: a shared reading does not make these two characters interchangeable.
Is ˓ the Arabic ʿayn mark?
No. Arabic ʿayn is transliterated with ʿ.
The character ʿ represents Arabic ʿayn or Hebrew ʿayin in Latin-letter transliteration. ˓ is a phonetic modifier for less lip rounding.
Use ˓ when a phonetic transcription calls for that pronunciation instruction; use ʿ when transliterating either letter.
Technical notation: it marks a pronunciation detail in phonetic transcription.
Do not substitute ʿ; it transliterates Arabic ʿayn or Hebrew ʿayin.
Drift: The 1926 IPA chart described this setting as “lips more spread”. At the 1989 Kiel revision, recommendations shifted toward the combining form . The IPA symbol list labels as less-rounded as of 2026.
Don't confuse it with
3
˓ and ◌̜ mark the same lip setting, but ◌̜ combines below a base; ˓ occupies a separate place after it.
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.
More like this
9
How to type or find ˓
- Search it as
- u+02d3 · 02d3 · ipa · phonetic half-ring · under-ring · less rounded
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
˓\02D3˓ when generating HTML.\u02D3.\textsublhalfring{...} for the combining under-ring, not for spacing ˓.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.