We'd like to use analytics cookies to understand which symbols people look up, so we know what to research next. They are not used for advertising and we set none of them unless you say yes. What we store.
A short slanting stroke beneath a consonant.
Also known as: Halant, Vowel killer, Conjunct former, Slanting stroke below a letter
The virama removes the inherent vowel that every Devanagari consonant carries. Without it, a consonant is read with an implicit 'a' — so the mark is what allows consonant clusters to be written at all, and in rendering it usually triggers a conjunct ligature rather than appearing.
Denotes suppression of the inherent vowel following a consonant in Devanagari and related scripts.
Contexts: Software
Is necessary because every Devanagari consonant carries an inherent vowel, so a bare consonant cannot otherwise be written.
Contexts: Software
Usually triggers a conjunct ligature in rendering rather than appearing as a visible stroke, so the mark's presence in the text is often invisible in the output.
Contexts: Software
Is called halant in Hindi usage and virama in the Sanskrit and Unicode naming, the same mark under two names.
Contexts: Software
A short stroke slanting down to the left, placed beneath the baseline of a Devanagari consonant.