Tifinagh Separator Mark

It marks a boundary between words in some traditional Tifinagh writing.

Tifinagh is a script used for Amazigh (Berber) languages. It descends from Libyco-Berber, an older North African script: a Libyco-Berber inscription is dated to about 138 BCE, and some proposals place the writing tradition's beginnings as early as the ninth century BCE. A Saharan Libyco-Berber branch continued as Tuareg Tifinagh; Neo-Tifinagh later adapted the tradition for Amazigh languages across North Africa.

Traditional texts could run words together without spaces, so ⵰ made the boundary visible. A 2008 Unicode proposal documents traditional use in Mali and examples from Algeria; it also records the mark doing comma or full-stop work in Niger. Some modern Neo-Tifinagh conventions use spaces and familiar punctuation instead.

When can ⵰ mean punctuation?

In Nigerien Tifinagh, it can act as a comma or full stop.

When someone sends you ⵰ in Tifinagh writing, read it from its position: between words it separates them; at a larger break in some Nigerien writing it can function as punctuation. It is a writing convention, not a tone cue.

Modern Neo-Tifinagh may leave ⵰ out. Spaces and familiar punctuation can carry the boundaries instead, so its absence does not mean a letter is missing.

Why can ⵰ point in different directions?

Tifinagh’s writing direction can change the mark’s orientation.

Tifinagh has been written left to right, right to left, vertically, and boustrophedon—that is, alternating direction from line to line. In right-to-left examples, the mark may be mirrored or turned. That is a direction-related form change, not another punctuation mark.