Iteration Marks and Special Symbols (々, 〜, ヶ)

Japanese writing uses a small family of marks that are neither kana nor kanji in the ordinary sense: the repeat mark 々, the old kana repeaters ゝ ゞ ヽ ヾ, the wave dash 〜, and the counter/place-name mark ヶ. Collectively the repeat symbols are called 踊り字 (おどりじ odoriji, "dancing marks"). They are small in number but appear constantly — 人々, 時々, 三ヶ月, 9〜17時 — and each carries a rule that trips up learners who try to read it literally. This page explains what each mark stands for, what it does to the reading, and why the most misunderstood of them, ヶ, is not what it looks like.

The repeat mark 々

The mark 々 stands in for a repeated kanji. Its formal name is 同の字点 (どうのじてん dōnojiten, "same-character mark"); typesetters nickname it ノマ (noma), because it looks like the katakana ノ stacked on マ. When a word repeats a kanji, you write the character once and follow it with 々 rather than writing the kanji twice.

人々 is 人 + 々, read hitobito ("people"); 山々 is yamayama ("mountains"). The 々 is read as whatever the repeated kanji is read as — it has no fixed sound of its own.

々 often triggers rendaku

Here is the reading rule learners miss. When a kanji repeats, the second copy frequently undergoes rendaku (連濁) — its initial consonant voices. So 々 is not just "say it twice"; it is often "say it twice, the second time voiced."

Rendaku is not automatic — 山々 stays yamayama and 我々 (wareware, "we") never voices — but it is common enough that you should expect it and check. The underlying voicing pattern is the same one described on the rendaku in writing page.

Note 日々 (hibi, "day after day"): 日 alone is hi, and the repeat voices to bi.

The one place you must not use 々

々 repeats a single kanji within one word. When two identical kanji sit next to each other but belong to different words, you must write both out.

民主主義 (minshu-shugi, "democracy") is 民主 + 主義. The two 主 belong to separate words, so it is never written 民主々義. The same holds for 会社社長 (kaisha-shachō, "company president"), not 会社々長.

The kana repeat marks ゝ ゞ ヽ ヾ

Kana have their own repeat marks, now (archaic) in everyday text but alive in proper names and old titles. ゝ repeats the previous hiragana; ゞ repeats it with rendaku (adding dakuten). The katakana equivalents are ヽ and ヾ. For repeating a whole multi-kana chunk, vertical text uses the tall くの字点 〳〵 (and its voiced form 〴〵).

こゝろ is こ + ゝ + ろ = kokoro ("heart"); the ゝ repeats the こ. You will see these marks in a few company and personal names that preserve older spelling — いすゞ (Isuzu, the automaker, いすず with a voiced ゞ) and the poet 金子みすゞ (Kaneko Misuzu) — but you should not introduce them into modern writing yourself.

The wave dash 〜

The wave dash 〜 has two everyday jobs. First, it marks a range — "from X to Y" — read as から (kara) or simply "to."

Second, in casual writing it marks stylized elongation — a drawn-out, sing-song vowel that conveys tone. This use is (informal), common in texting, social media, and advertising.

ヶ — the mark that is secretly a kanji

The little ヶ is the most misread symbol in written Japanese. It looks exactly like a small katakana ケ, so beginners read it "ke." It is never "ke." It reads ka in counters and ga in place names — and the reason is a single fact almost no textbook mentions.

ヶ is an abbreviation of the kanji 箇 (ka), the general counter character (as in 箇所 kasho, "spot," and 箇条 kajō, "item"). The shape was borrowed from the bamboo radical 竹 at the top of 箇. Because ヶ is 箇, it inherits 箇's reading, ka — which is why "ke" is impossible.

三ヶ月 (sankagetsu, "three months") is literally 三箇月; 一ヶ所 (ikkasho, "one spot") is 一箇所. All of these mean the same and are read identically: 三ヶ月 = 三ヵ月 = 三箇月 = 三か月. The small ヵ is just a variant; formal writing may use full 箇 or plain hiragana か. For how counters like these attach to numbers, see numbers in kanji.

ヶ read ga in place names

In place names, the same character preserves the old genitive particle が ("of"), so it reads ga.

関ヶ原 is Seki-ga-hara ("field of the barrier"), 自由ヶ丘 is Jiyū-ga-oka ("freedom hill"), 霞ヶ関 is Kasumi-ga-seki. The ヶ is a shrunk 箇 doing duty for the possessive が — so once again, not "ke."

Common mistakes

The thread running through every one of these is the same: none of these marks is a plain, self-contained letter. 々 borrows the reading of its neighbor (and often voices it); ヶ borrows the identity of the kanji 箇. Read them as pointers back to something else, not as characters in their own right, and they stop being mysterious.

Key takeaways

• 々 repeats the preceding kanji and takes its reading — frequently with rendaku (時々 tokidoki, 人々 hitobito), sometimes without (山々 yamayama).
• Never use 々 to bridge two different words: 民主主義, not 民主々義.
• The kana repeaters ゝ ゞ ヽ ヾ are (archaic), surviving in names and old titles (こゝろ, いすゞ).
• The wave dash 〜 marks ranges (9時〜18時) and, (informally), stylized elongation (おいしい〜).
• ヶ reads ka in counters (三ヶ月) and ga in place names (関ヶ原) — never ke — because it is a shrunken form of the kanji 箇.