Here are some tips that should work for typing IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols on your Windows or Macintosh computer. Some of them should be useful for iOS or Android apps as well. (Unix users: consider LaTeX?)
What font should I use?
The best way to type IPA symbols is to use a Unicode font. Unicode fonts let you open a document on different computers or in different programs or apps without messing up any characters or symbols.
These days, most standard fonts are Unicode fonts, and most Unicode fonts include IPA symbols. Here are some examples of widely used fonts that should work:
- Times New Roman
- Calibri
- Tahoma
- Arial, or Arial Unicode MS
- Lucida Sans Unicode
For more examples of Unicode fonts that include IPA characters, see the IPA in Unicode web page by John Wells, University College London.
How can I get IPA characters into my document?
- Use a web site to select IPA characters, then paste them into your document:
- TypeIt IPA | An interactive web site, by Tomasz P. Szynalski
- IPA in Unicode | A list of IPA symbols that you can simply copy and paste, by John Wells, University College London
- Input them into your document using MS Word or OpenOffice/LibreOffice:
- Use "Insert > Symbol" in MS Word
- Use "Insert > Special Character" in OpenOffice/LibreOffice
These tools will open up a box that displays all the characters in the font you are using. You then have to find and click on the symbol(s) that you want to insert into your document. The IPA-specific symbols are grouped together, but symbols that are used in the writing systems of non-English languages, such as [æ ŋ ð], typically appear earlier in the list.
Some of the IPA characters are diacritics, which means that they are superimposed above or below the last character you entered. (Examples of common diacritics are those for dentalization, velarization, nasalization, and syllabic consonants.) First type the basic character, and then type the diacritic you want to combine with that character.
For more information and additional resources
- IPA4Linguists, Portland State University
- The IPA in Unicode, by John Wells, University College London
- IPA fonts and keyboards, by Maria Gouskova, NYU
- Phonetic Fonts Page, by Bruce Hayes, UCLA
Page last updated: July 2020