What ʸ means
It marks palatalization in phonetic writing.
Palatalization is the tongue's movement toward the hard palate while making a sound. Americanist phonetic notation, a system linguists use to record speech sounds, commonly uses ʸ where other conventions use ʲ.
A technical phonetic marker, not a letter used in ordinary spelling.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ʸ appear as a box?
The active font has no glyph for ʸ. Choose a font that includes it.
How to type ʸ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 02B8, then Alt+X to get ʸ.
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 y”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 02b8, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ʸCSS
\02B8Linux Unicode input
As of 2026, in Linux desktop environments with Unicode input, press Ctrl+Shift+U, enter 02B8, then press Enter.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ʸ
HTML hex
ʸ
CSS content
content: "\02B8";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%CA%B8
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.