The International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode

Displaying IPA symbols

For you to be able to display Unicode phonetic symbols correctly on your web browser,

• the browser must be Unicode-compliant — version 4 or later of Netscape or Internet Explorer,
• you must be running Windows 95 or later (don't know about Macintosh, Unix or Linux, but see advice from the Unicode site)
• you must have installed a Unicode font that includes the IPA symbols
  The list of such Windows TrueType/OpenType fonts currently available and known to me is as follows:
  • Arial Unicode MS, 23.0 MB (download)
  • Code 2000 (download, shareware, $5)
  • Lucida Sans Unicode, 316 KB (download)
  • MS Mincho, 8.66 MB (from Microsoft site, download and run "Office XP Tool: Japanese Language Pack") - this font lacks the IPA diacritics and certain other symbols
  and
• the web document you are displaying must specify this font with either a style sheet {font-family} tag or an in-line <font face> tag.

In this version of this page no font is specified. You can use it to test a font by setting your browser to it. (Another version, which specifies Arial MS Unicode, Lucida Sans Unicode, or MS Mincho, in that order of preference.)

Inserting IPA symbols in web documents

There are two ways to insert Unicode IPA symbols into your HTML files: by using MS Word (97 and later), or by using a numeric code.

• Word 97+. With a Unicode font selected, use Insert | Symbol (normal text) and scroll down the box until you find the character you want. Select it, and Insert. Afterwards, save the document using File | Save as HTML. Word will automatically convert the character into the corresponding numeric entity (see next para) or the corresponding UTF-8 encoding. (If you are going to use the character frequently, it might be worthwhile assigning a Shortcut Key (macro) for it.)
• Alternatively, write direct HTML, referencing each IPA symbol as a "decimal numeric entity", using the code numbers listed below. To do this you put ampersand, number sign, the Unicode decimal number for the symbol, and semicolon. For example, to include the velar nasal symbol, ŋ, which has the Unicode number 331, write ŋ. To transcribe the English word thing, θɪŋ, write θɪŋ
• Force the use of an appropriate font by including a font tag as mentioned above.

Unicode decimal numbers for IPA symbols

The Unicode manual lists code numbers only in hexadecimal, while HTML numeric entities may be entered either as decimal (see above) or as hexadecimal; in the latter case, you must include a letter x after #, thus for θɪŋ write θɪŋ. Here they are listed with their decimal numbers.

Alphabetic | Spacing diacritics | Non-spacing diacritics

Alphabetic

Top of lists

Spacing diacritics and suprasegmentals