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Half-width katakana

Half-width, hankaku (半角), refers to a character which is half as wide as it is high. Characters of equal height and width are called full-width, zenkaku (全角).

Half-width is also used in a computer context to describe the ASCII character set, which is called hankaku eisūji (半角英数字) in Japanese.

Half-width katakana is a type of computer output where the katakana is tall and thin. Half-width katakana is used on cash register receipts and on screen subtitles to save space. Half-width katakana was originally based on the JIS X 0201 encoding standard. In half-width katakana, there are no forms of characters with combined dakuten or handakuten, and these are represented by a separate symbol taking up the same width as one katakana character.

Half-width katakana in Unicode

In Unicode, half-width katakana is represented from position FF61 to FF9F.

 0123456789ABCDEF
FF6 ｡｢｣､･ｦｧｨｩｪｫｬｭｮｯ
FF7 ｰｱｲｳｴｵｶｷｸｹｺｻｼｽｾｿ
FF8 ﾀﾁﾂﾃﾄﾅﾆﾇﾈﾉﾊﾋﾌﾍﾎﾏ
FF9 ﾐﾑﾒﾓﾔﾕﾖﾗﾘﾙﾚﾛﾜﾝﾞﾟ

  • Unicode code chart of halfwidth katakana (PDF file)