Line Over Letters (ā ē ī ō ū): Long Vowels, Tones and Romaji

What does the line over letters mean in each language?

A line over letters is always the same mark, the macron, but each language gives it its own job. Most use it for a long vowel. The Unicode chart for the combining macron (opens in a new tab), U+0304, sums that up in one word: long. The same note adds the big exception, the first tone of Mandarin pinyin.

The table pairs each language with what the line tells a reader and one word that shows it. The words come from Wiktionary's entries for malum (opens in a new tab), ā (opens in a new tab), ū (opens in a new tab), wāhine (opens in a new tab), 媽 (opens in a new tab) and ō (opens in a new tab). Te Aka (opens in a new tab), the Māori dictionary, gives wahine. The romaji row is from the Japanese government's rule (opens in a new tab), and the names are from Wikidata.

Language	Letters	What the line tells you	Example
Latin	ā ē ī ō ū	A long vowel	mālum, apple, against malum, evil
Māori	ā ē ī ō ū	A long vowel; Māori calls the mark tohutō	wahine, woman; wāhine, women
Hawaiian	a vowel with the kahakō	A long vowel, said with stress	wāhine, the plural of wahine
Latvian	ā ē ī ū, but no ō	A long vowel: ā is [aː]	Artūrs, Edvīns
Lithuanian	ū only	The long u, called u ilgoji	Šarūnas, Žydrūnas
Chinese pinyin	ā ē ī ō ū	The first tone, not a length	妈 mā, mother
Japanese romaji	ā ē ī ō ū	A long vowel; a doubled vowel is also allowed	Tōkyō or Toukyou
English dictionaries	ō	A respelling of the long o of goat	ō in a pronunciation key

Length is the default, and pinyin is the odd one out. In Latin, the line is all that tells an apple from an evil. Wiktionary gives mālum a long [aː] and malum a short [a]. In Māori and Hawaiian, the same line turns wahine into the plural wāhine.

The University of Hawaiʻi (opens in a new tab) says the kahakō lengthens a vowel and adds stress to it. Its example is pau. Depending on where the ʻokina and the kahakō sit, it can mean completed, smudge, moist or skirt.

Two traps sit in the data. The Latin Extended-A chart (opens in a new tab) still names Latvian beside ō. Yet the CLDR alphabet of Latvian holds ā, ē, ī and ū and no ō. CLDR also lists ā for Tongan and Kuvi, and ō for Silesian. AccentPad has no cited source for what the line does in those three, so the table leaves them out.

Why is the line over pinyin vowels a tone, not a length?

Because pinyin spends its accent marks on pitch. The Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet (opens in a new tab) is published by China's Ministry of Education. It gives each tone its own mark and puts the mark on the main vowel of the syllable. Its example row runs one syllable, ma, through every mark:

Character	Pinyin	Tone in the Scheme	Mark on the vowel
妈	mā	阴平, the first tone	a straight line
麻	má	阳平, the second tone	a rising stroke
马	mǎ	上声, the third tone	a v-shaped caron
骂	mà	去声, the fourth tone	a falling stroke
吗	ma	轻声, the neutral tone	no mark

So a pinyin ā and a Māori ā look identical. They are even one character, U+0101. Yet they answer different questions. The Māori line says hold the vowel. The pinyin line names a tone, the one Unicode's chart calls the first tone, and says nothing about length.

The same holds for ō. Wiktionary gives ō in Mandarin as the first-tone reading of 噢, and in Māori as a long o. Copy the tile either way; the language decides how to read it.

How did Japan's 2025 rule change the line over letters in romaji?

From 1954, Japan's official romaji marked long vowels with a circumflex. The 1954 rule (opens in a new tab), kept online by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, puts a circumflex over a long vowel, as in ô. On 22 December 2025, Cabinet Notice No. 4 (opens in a new tab) abolished that rule and replaced it.

The new rule writes a long vowel with a line, ¯, over the vowel letter. It still allows ^ where needed. It also allows the vowel to be written twice, following kana spelling. Wiktionary labels Tōkyō as the Hepburn spelling of とうきょう, and the notice now prints the same form. Here are its own examples:

Word	With the line	Vowel written twice	Spelling the notice leaves alone
東京	Tōkyō	Toukyou	Tokyo
柔道	jūdō	juudou	judo
大田原	Ōtawara	Ootawara	Ohtawara
東北	Tōhoku	Touhoku

The last column matters to anyone writing English. The notice does not ask fields that use other spellings to change them at once. Tokyo, judo and Ohtawara are its examples. For a long i, the kana-style spelling is the usual one: kawaii and shiitake, not kawaī or shītake. The same goes for a long e written with い, as in teien and Heisei.

Names follow their owners. The notice asks writers to respect the wishes of the people and groups whose names they romanise. Wikidata's Japanese given names with the line include Kōichi, Kyōko, Ryūichi and Yūsuke.

Should English text keep the line over Māori and Hawaiian words?

Yes, where the language's own authorities ask for it, and both do. The University of Hawaiʻi says the State of Hawaiʻi and the university strongly encourage the Hawaiian diacritical marks, the kahakō among them. For Māori, Te Aka's entry for oropuare (opens in a new tab), vowel, quotes the Māori Language Commission. Its main wish is that the macron mark the vowels pronounced long.

Fonts used to be the excuse. A University of Hawaiʻi plant database (opens in a new tab), last updated in 2001, explained that its software could not search, sort or display the kahakō and the ʻokina. The university's language page still offers a switch that hides the marks when a browser shows boxes.

That excuse is gone for these letters. Each line over letters on this page has been in Unicode since version 1.1 of 1993, so it travels as plain text. Copy ā, ē, ī, ō or ū from the tiles and the spelling survives.

Is the line over letters a macron or an overline?

Unicode keeps them apart. The macron belongs to one letter. The Latin Extended-A chart decomposes ā into a plus U+0304, the combining macron, and does the same for ē, ī, ō and ū. The combining overline, U+0305, is listed as the overscore or vinculum. The chart notes that it connects on the left and right, so a run of letters gets one unbroken bar.

You want	Use	Code points	Notes
a with line over it, a with macron	ā	U+0101	One character, equal to a + U+0304
e with line over it, e with macron	ē	U+0113	One character, equal to e + U+0304
i with line over it, i with macron	ī	U+012B	One character, equal to i + U+0304
o with line over it, o with macron, the long o symbol	ō	U+014D	One character, equal to o + U+0304
u with line over it, u with macron	ū	U+016B	One character, equal to u + U+0304
n with line on top, or s with line over it	n̄, s̄	the letter + U+0304	No single character exists
one bar across several letters	each letter + U+0305	U+0305	The bars join into one line
the line on its own	¯	U+00AF	A spacing character; copies side by side do not join

The n̄ and s̄ row is our own check. We ran it on 9 October 2026 with Python 3.14's unicodedata module, which carries Unicode 16.0. After NFC normalization, n + U+0304 and s + U+0304 stayed two code points. The pair a + U+0304 became the single ā. A font draws n̄ as one letter, but a code point count sees two.

Which Word code types each letter with a line over it?

Windows has no Alt code for any of these letters, but Word has a method of its own. Type the code, then press Alt+X right after it. Word swaps the code for the letter.

Letter	Code in Word	Capital	Code in Word
ā	0101	Ā	0100
ē	0113	Ē	0112
ī	012b	Ī	012a
ō	014d	Ō	014c
ū	016b	Ū	016a

Outside Word, use Win+. and the Symbols tab, or the press-and-hold menu on a Mac or a phone. The step-by-step guide below covers each device.