Alan Wood’s Unicode Resources

Test for Unicode support in Web browsers

Katakana

U+30A0 – U+30FF   (12448–12543)

Katakana is a kana (Japanese syllabic writing system), used in modern Japanese mainly for words of foreign origin and for emphasis. The characters are more angular than those of Hiragana, another kana that is used mainly for writing grammatical morphemes. Historical characters can be found in the Kana Supplement range. You can find some real (non-Unicode) Japanese text to try at http://www.microsoft.com/japan/, Asahi.com and http://www.apple.co.jp/. You can see some Unicode Japanese on the What is Unicode? in Japanese page. There are some related characters in the Katakana Phonetic Extensions range.

Users of Internet Explorer 5 for Windows can choose to install updates for viewing Japanese Web pages and to provide a Japanese interface and a Japanese IME.

Users of Macintosh computers running Mac OS 9 can install an Apple Language Kit for Japanese, which includes an IME.

The characters that appear in the first column of the following table depend on the browser that you are using, the fonts installed on your computer, and the browser options you have chosen that determine the fonts used to display particular character sets, encodings or languages.

You can find some or all of the characters in this range in the Windows Unicode fonts ALPHABETUM Unicode, AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni, AR PL ZenKai Uni, Arial Unicode MS, BabelStone Han, Baekmuk Batang, Baekmuk Dotum, Baekmuk Gulim, Baekmuk Headline, Batang, BatangChe, Caslon, Chrysanthi Unicode, Code2000, Free Idg Serif, Gulim Che, Gungsuh, GungsuhChe, HAN NOM A, HanaMin Regular, HY Shin Myeongjo Std Acro, Kochi Gothic, Kochi Mincho, Kozuka Mincho Pro Acro, Malgun Gothic, Ming(for ISO10646), MingLiU, MingLiU_HKSCS, MS Gothic, MS Hei, MS Mincho, MS PGothic, MS PMincho, MS Song, MS UI Gothic, MSung Std Acro, New Gulim, NSimSun, NSimSun-18030, PMingLiU, Roman Unicode, Sazanami Gothic, Sazanami Mincho, SimHei, SimSun, SimSun-18030, STSong Std Acro, Sun-ExtA, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, TSC JSong S TT, UnBatang, WenQuanYi Zen Hei, WenQuanYi Zen Hei Mono, and YOzFontN; in the Macintosh OS 9 Unicode fonts AppleGothic, AppleMyungjo, Beijing, ChuGothic, Fang Song, Gungseouche, Hei, HeiseiKakuGothic, HeiseiMincho, Kai, Osaka, Osaka-Mono, Pilgiche, SaiMincho, Seoul and Song; and in the Macintosh OS X Unicode fonts AppleGothic, AppleMyungjo, Batang, Beijing, Fang Song, #GothicMedium, Gulim, #GungSeo, Hangang, Hei, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Std, Hiragino Maru Gothic Pro, Hiragino Mincho Pro, Kai, MS Gothic, MS Mincho, MS PGothic, MS PMincho, #MyungjoNeue, Osaka, Osaka-Mono, #PCMyungjo, #PilGi, PMingLiU, Seoul, SimSun, Song, STFangsong, STHeiti, STKaiti, STSong and #TaeGraphic.

To see exactly which characters are included in a particular font, you can use a utility such as Andrew West’s BabelMap, Apple’s TrueEdit, or WunderMoosen’s FontChecker.

If you are not familiar with the characters, you can check the characters displayed here with the graphical display at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U30A0.pdf.

Copyright © 1999–2010 Alan Wood

The hexadecimal numbers and the character names in the above table are taken from the Unicode 3.2 Character Database, Copyright © 1991–2002 Unicode, Inc., as contained in UnicodeData.txt on the Unicode Web site (http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/) in April 2002.

Created 3rd February 1999   Last updated 7th November 2010