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 ûokina to represent the glottal stop, and in the Uzbek alphabet to form the letters Oû and Gû, which correspond to àand àrespectively in the Uzbek Cyrillic alphabet.
The letter turned comma is encoded at , in the 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 defined in Unicode as a modifier letter [a letter or symbol typically written next to another letter that it modifies in some way] 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.
The character is used in many Polynesian languages as ûokina, 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 Oû (Cyrillic ÃÂ) and Gû (Cyrillic ÃÂ).
It is sometimes used in Latin transliterations of the Hebrew letter ûáyin and the Arabic letter ûayn.
The letter turned comma is also often used to romanize aspirated consonants in Armenian.