Hook (diacritic)

For other uses, see Hook (disambiguation).

̡
Hook
Diacritics in Latin & Greek accent acute( ´ ) double acute( ˝ ) grave( ` ) double grave(  ̏ ) breve( ˘ ) inverted breve(  ̑ ) caron, háček( ˇ ) cedilla( ¸ ) circumflex( ˆ ) diaeresis, umlaut( ¨ ) dot( · ) hook, hook above(   ̡   ̢  ̉ ) horn(  ̛ ) iota subscript(  ͅ  ) macron( ¯ ) ogonek, nosinė( ˛ ) perispomene(  ͂  ) ring( ˚, ˳ ) rough breathing( ῾ ) smooth breathing( ᾿ ) Marks sometimes used as diacritics apostrophe( ’ ) bar( ◌̸ ) colon( : ) comma( , ) hyphen( ˗ ) tilde( ~ ) Diacritical marks in other scripts Arabic diacritics Early Cyrillic diacritics kamora(  ҄ ) pokrytie(  ҇ ) titlo(  ҃ ) Gurmukhī diacritics Hebrew diacritics Indic diacritics anusvara( ं ং ം ) chandrabindu( ँ ఁ ) nukta( ़ ) virama( ् ് ్ ් ್ ) chandrakkala( ് ) IPA diacritics Japanese diacritics dakuten( ﾞ ) handakuten( ﾟ ) Khmer diacritics Syriac diacritics Thai diacritics Related Dotted circle◌ Punctuation marks Logic symbols

Ɓ	ɓ
Ƈ	ƈ
Ɗ	ɗ
Ƒ	ƒ
Ɠ	ɠ
Ɦ	ɦ
Ƙ	ƙ
Ɱ	ɱ
Ƥ	ƥ
Ƭ	ƭ
Ⱳ	ⱳ
Ƴ	ƴ
Ȥ	ȥ

In typesetting, the hook or tail is a diacritic mark attached to letters in many alphabets. In shape it looks like a hook and it can be attached below as a descender, on top as an ascender and sometimes to the side. The orientation of the hook can change its meaning: when it is below and curls to the left it can be interpreted as a palatal hook, and when it curls to the right is called hook tail or tail and can be interpreted as a retroflex hook. It should not be mistaken with the hook above, a diacritical mark used in Vietnamese, or the rhotic hook, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Letters with hook

It could be argued that the hook was used to derive the letter J from the letter I, or the letter Eng (ŋ) from the letter N. However, these letters are usually not identified as being formed with the hook.

Most letters with hook are used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and many languages use them (along with capitals) representing the same sounds.

The hook often attaches to the top part of the letter, sometimes replacing the ascender.

If it attaches to the bottom part of the letter, it can curl to the left (and could be a palatal hook), or to the right (and could be a retroflex hook).

Latin alphabet
Letter	Name	Hook position
ᶏ	A with retroflex hook	bottom
ᶐ	Script with retroflex hook	bottom
Ɓ ɓ	B with hook	top
Ƈ ƈ	C with hook	top
Ɗ ɗ	D with hook	top
Ɖ ɖ	D with tail or African D	bottom
ᶒ	E with retroflex hook	bottom
ᶕ	Schwa with retroflex hook	bottom
ᶓ	Epsilon with retroflex hook	bottom
ᶔ	Reversed epsilon with retroflex hook	bottom
Ƒ ƒ	F with hook	bottom
Ɠ ɠ	G with hook	top
Ɦ ɦ	H with hook	top
ɧ	Heng with hook	top
ᶖ	I with retroflex hook	bottom
Ƙ ƙ	K with hook	top
Ɱ ɱ	M with hook	bottom
Ɲ ɲ	N with left hook	bottom left
ᶇ	N with palatal hook	bottom right
ɳ	N with retroflex hook	bottom right
ᶗ	Open o with retroflex hook	bottom
Ƥ ƥ	P with hook	top
Ɋ ɋ	Q with hook tail	bottom
Ɽ ɽ	R with tail	bottom left
ᶘ	Esh with retroflex hook	bottom
Ƭ ƭ	T with hook	top
Ʈ ʈ	T with retroflex hook	bottom
ᶙ	U with retroflex hook	bottom
Ʋ ʋ	V with hook or script V	top
ⱱ	V with right hook	top
Ⱳ ⱳ	W with hook	top right
Ƴ ƴ	Y with hook	top right
Ȥ ȥ	Z with hook	bottom
ᶚ	Ezh with retroflex hook	bottom
Cyrillic alphabet
Ӄ ӄ	Ka with hook	bottom right
Ӈ ӈ	En with hook	bottom right
Ӽ ӽ	Ha with hook	bottom right
Ԓ ԓ	El with hook	bottom right

Unicode

Unicode has the combining diacritics U+0321  ̡  COMBINING PALATIZED HOOK BELOW (HTML ̡) and U+0322  ̢  COMBINING RETROFLEX HOOK BELOW (HTML ̢) but these are not recommended to be used with letters, and should be used to illustrate the hooks themselves. Instead Unicode recommends the use of characters that already include the hook.

The U+02DE ˞ MODIFIER LETTER RHOTIC HOOK (HTML ˞) is used to mark an r-colored vowel.

See also

• Hook above
• Palatal hook