Chōon

Japanese writing

Kanji Kana

• Hiragana
• Katakana
• Hentaigana
• Man'yōgana

Uses

• Furigana
• Okurigana

Rōmaji

The chōonpu (長音符, chōonpu ^?) or bōsen (棒線, bōsen^?) mark is a Japanese symbol which is used to indicate a long vowel, especially in katakana writing. Its form is a horizontal or vertical line in the center of the text with the width of one kanji or kana character. It is written horizontally in horizontal text and vertically in vertical text. In romanized Japanese, the function of the chōon mark is usually replaced by the macron mark above the vowel, as seen in this text, but a circumflex (so we would, for example, get "chôon") is also in use. In JSL romanization, a doubled vowel, as in chooon, is used. The chōon is a distinct mark from the dash, and in most Japanese typefaces it can easily be distinguished. The symbol is sometimes used with hiragana, for example in the signs of ramen restaurants, which are sometimes written らーめん in hiragana. However, usually, hiragana does not use the chōon but another vowel kana to express this sound. The following table shows the usual hiragana equivalents used to form a long vowel, using the ha-gyō as an example.

In the Japanese Industrial Standards encoding system, the chōon has position 213C, and in Unicode it is at position 30FC.