What ʲ means
It marks palatalization in the consonant before it.
A superscript j after a consonant describes one sound: pʲ is p with the tongue raised toward the hard palate, not p followed by j.
Why is ʲ a separate character?
It is a phonetic modifier, not formatted text.
Unicode encodes ʲ separately; formatting ordinary j as superscript does not supply the same phonetic notation.
Technical: it belongs in phonetic transcription.
Do not read ʲ as a second j sound.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ʲ 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 ʲ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 02B2, then Alt+X to get ʲ.
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 j”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 02b2, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ʲCSS
\02B2Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ʲ
HTML hex
ʲ
CSS content
content: "\02B2";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%CA%B2
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.