Wo (kana)

Hiragana	Katakana
Transliteration	wo
Hiragana Man'yōgana:	遠
Katakana Man'yōgana	乎
kana gojūon n wa ra ya ma ha na ta sa ka a sokuon wi ri mi hi ni chi shi ki i dakuten ru yu mu fu nu tsu su ku u chōonpu we re me he ne te se ke e wo ro yo mo ho no to so ko o

を, in hiragana, or ヲ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora.

Modern usage

In Japanese, this kana is used almost exclusively for a particle; therefore, the katakana form (ヲ) is fairly uncommon in everyday language — mostly used as a stand-in for its hiragana counterpart in texts that need to be written entirely in katakana.

Generally, it represents [o], although some dialects retain the pronunciation [wo],^{[citation needed]} which is also often used in songs. It is also occasionally pronounced this way when stressing the particle, especially to clarify when someone misunderstands what has been said. It is transliterated variably as ⟨o⟩ or ⟨wo⟩, with the former being faithful to standard pronunciation but the latter avoiding confusion with お and オ. Katakana ヲ can sometimes be combined with a handakuten, ヺ, to represent a /vo/ sound in foreign words; however, most IMEs lack a convenient way to do this. The combination ヴォ is used far more frequently to represent the /vo/ sound.

A "wo" sound is usually represented in katakana as ウォ instead. For example, ウォークマン (Wōkuman, "Walkman") and ウォッカ (Wokka, "Vodka")

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal w- (わ行 wa-gyō)	Wo	を	ヲ

Hiragana を is still used in several Okinawan orthographies for the syllable /o~wo/; in the Ryukyu University system it is /o/, whereas お is /ʔo/. Katakana ヲ is used in Ainu for /wo/.

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing を

Stroke order in writing ヲ