Modifier letter turned comma
The modifier letter turned comma '' is a character found in Unicode resembling a comma that has been turned. Unlike a comma, it is a letter, not a piece of punctuation. It is used in a number of Polynesian alphabets as the letter ʻokina to represent the glottal stop, and in the Uzbek alphabet to form the letters Oʻ and Gʻ, which correspond to Ў and Ғ respectively in the Uzbek Cyrillic alphabet.
Encoding
The letter turned comma is encoded at, in the Spacing [Modifier Letters |Spacing Modifier Letters Unicode block].In Unicode code charts, the representative glyph used for U+02BB looks identical to that used for the, but this is not true for all fonts. The primary practical difference between the 'letter turned comma' and 'left single quotation mark' is that the 'letter turned comma' is character property#General Category|defined in Unicode] as a modifier letter whereas 'left single quotation mark' is defined a type of punctuation mark and an opening quotation mark. For human readers, the difference is imperceptible and unimportant but it has significance in text processing applications.
Use
The character is used in many Polynesian languages as ʻokina, a unicameral consonant letter used within the Latin script to mark the phonemic glottal stop.In the Uzbek alphabet, the letter turned comma is used to write the letters Oʻ and Gʻ.
It is sometimes used in Latin transliterations of the Hebrew letter ʻáyin and the Arabic letter ʻayn.
The letter turned comma is also often used to romanize aspirated consonants in Armenian.