Sorry, I don't know the correct name for them, but I'm thinking about those marks sometimes used for emphasis in Japanese, that look very similar to Japanese commas. If you're reading right to left and down the page they come to the right of the character or kana. Does anyone know how to write them using Japanese input? (Presumably when typing they come above the character or kana).

If you know what I'm talking about and you can help I'd be very grateful.

Yeah, the bouten is used quite a lot in manga... I wonder how one would go about writing that on a computer, I doubt Windows IME supports even half of those typographic symbols, even if it might be able to show them.

Posted By: Richard

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I've seen the bouten used before, but what I'm talking about looks like the touten (just a little thinner). I've seen it a lot, and I can see it in a bunko book in front of me now. The mark is in the place where furigana would normally be, and is used for emphasis or sometimes to show that some hiragana is eg a noun rather than particles when it might be ambiguous.

Perhaps it's impossible or really fiddly to do this on Word, but thanks for the ideas anyway.

Maybe it's something special to that book? The bouten is used in several manga (from the top of my head, both Naruto and Shinchan) and is (except for looks apparently) used exactly the same as what you're describing. It's a dot in the place of the furigana, it's used both as emphasis but also for clarification. For example, shinchan (if you don't know, it's a 5 year old boy) often mispronounce words making a pun (often with loanwords from english) and the bouten is used on every kana in that word to show that it's a special word which needs some extra consideration so to speak.

Personally, I've never seen a touten in a furigana position... I've never actually seen anything but furigana and bouten in that position in a japanese text.