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ʹ

modifier letter prime

Modifier Letter Prime

ʹ is the modifier letter prime, a specialist prime mark for linguistic notation: stress, emphasis, or a transliterated soft sign. It looks like an apostrophe mark, but ordinary punctuation needs a different character — copy it from the palette only for that specialist use.

Text symbol
Also called
soft-sign transliteration mark · linguistic prime
Search it as
soft sign · palatalization · prime mark · apostrophe mark · stress mark · phonetic prime
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ʹ means

It is a separate modifier letter for notation. In dictionaries and phonetic writing it can mark stress or emphasis. After a romanized consonant it commonly stands for the Cyrillic soft sign, signalling palatalization — a softened pronunciation.

Do not swap it with the keyboard apostrophe or mathematical prime. Those handle everyday punctuation and measurement; use ʹ only when the transliteration or notation scheme specifically calls for this soft-sign mark.

Technical and specialist: use it in linguistic notation, transliteration, and reference material.

For ordinary punctuation, use an apostrophe character instead.

Don't confuse it with

3
′
Prime
The prime serves math, science, and measurement notation; ʹ serves linguistic notation.
'
Apostrophe
The straight keyboard apostrophe is everyday punctuation, not the specialist transliteration mark.
ʼ
Modifier Letter Apostrophe
The modifier letter apostrophe marks glottal sounds and related uses, not the soft-sign job.

Questions people ask

1

Why does ʹ 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 ʹ

Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 02B9, then Alt+X to get ʹ.
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 prime”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 02b9, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ʹ
CSS
\02B9
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ʹ
HTML hex
ʹ
CSS content
content: "\02B9";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%CA%B9
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
2
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

1

Accents & marks659 symbols

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