What ʰ means
It signals an audible puff tied to the neighboring sound.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system for writing speech sounds. In pʰ, ʰ shows that a puff of air follows the release of p. The mark modifies that consonant; it does not add a syllable.
Position changes the reading: pʰ, tʰ, and kʰ place the breath after the consonant; ʰp, ʰt, and ʰk place it before. After voiced b, d, or g, ʰ can instead mark a breathy or murmured release.
Don't confuse it with
4Combination ideas
3A puff follows the release of each voiceless consonant.
Breath comes before each consonant: preaspiration.
The release may be breathy or murmured after a voiced consonant.
Questions people ask
1Why does ʰ 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 ʰ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 02B0, then Alt+X to get ʰ.
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 small h”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 02b0, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ʰCSS
\02B0How to type ʰ
It has no standard key on most keyboards. Use Unicode input if your app supports it.
Linux
Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 02B0, then press Enter or Space.
Microsoft Word
Type 02B0, then press Alt+X.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ʰ
HTML hex
ʰ
CSS content
content: "\02B0";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%CA%B0
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.