Combining Latin Small Letter R

Combining Latin Small Letter R at U+036C is a nonspacing mark that places a small r above the preceding character. It belongs to the Combining Diacritical Marks block and functions as a letter-like diacritic rather than as an independent lowercase r. Its main real-world use is in specialist phonetic, dialectological, and linguistic transcription, where a superscript r can mark r-coloring, rhoticization, or another r-related articulation attached to a vowel or consonant. For example, a vowel may be annotated with a raised r to show that its pronunciation has an r-like quality, depending on the transcription convention being used. It can also appear in scholarly editions, manuscript transcription, and older philological notation when editors need to reproduce a small r written above a base letter. The practical gotcha is that it combines with the character before it, so searching, cursor movement, deletion, and visual placement may behave differently from a normal typed r; some fonts also position the mark more cleanly than others.