››

modifier letter low grave accent

Modifier Letter Low Grave Accent

In older International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation, ˎ marks a low-falling tone: pitch drops from mid to low. It was placed before the syllable whose pitch it describes.

Text symbol

What ˎ means

It marks a low-falling tone in older IPA notation.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system for writing speech sounds. In its older tone notation, ˎ appeared before the syllable whose pitch it described. The 1926 IPA chart lists it for low falling pitch, among marks used for language teaching and phonetic description.

By the 1989 IPA revision, the subscript grave had been superseded. Later conventions use tone letters or combining tone marks.

Specialist and historical: it marks pitch in phonetic transcription.

Don't confuse it with

Modifier Letter Grave Accent

An older IPA high-falling tone mark; ˎ marks low falling pitch.

Grave Accent

The keyboard backtick is ordinary punctuation; ˎ is a modifier used for phonetic pitch.

Questions people ask

Why does ˎ 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 or find ˎ

Also called: low fall · subscript grave
Search it as: IPA · low falling tone · phonetic tone mark
Shows up in: Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

Windows (Word)

⎇Alt+XType 02CE, then AltX to get ˎ.

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 “modifier letter low grave accent”.

Linux

⎈Ctrl+⇧Shift+UType 02ce, then Enter or Space.

HTML

ˎ

CSS

\02CE

Linux

In apps that support Unicode hex input, press CtrlShiftU, type 02ce, then Enter.

Codes and encoding1 code points

HTML decimal

HTML hex

CSS content

content: "\02CE";

Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.

URL encoded

%CB%8E

On screen

Code points

JS .length

UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

Accents & marks659 symbols

^`¨¯´¸ʰ ʱ ʲ ʳ ʴ ʵ