Burmese (draft)

Myanmar

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Orthographic syllables

Algorithms for manipulating text at a sub-word level use orthographic syllable boundaries, rather than phonetic syllable boundaries.

The boundaries of an orthographic syllable may differ from those of a phonetic syllable, particularly in the presence of a conjunct. For more details, see graphemes.

    

Vowel sounds

Some of the above sounds can only occur in open syllables, others only in closed syllables. As a rough rule, the plain vowels occur in open syllables, and the diphthongs in closed.

The sound ə only occurs in minor syllables, and is the only sound occurring in those syllables.

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b	t d				k ɡ	ʔ
apirated	pʰ	tʰ				kʰ
affricates				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
apirated				t͡ʃʰ
fricatives		θ ð	s z	ʃ			h
apirated			sʰ
nasals	m m̥		n n̥		ɲ ɲ̊	ŋ ŋ̊
approximants	w ʍ		l l̥		j
trills/flaps			r

Tones

Burmese is a contour tone language, with four tones: creaky, low, high and stopped. The tones involve more than simple pitch variations.

Syllables ending with a stop consonant (always pronounced ʔ) always use the stopped tone, and no others.

Syllables that end with a vowel sound or the nasal sound (always pronounced ɴ) have one of the other three tones.

The following table provides typical phonological transcriptions and descriptions for the four tones, using a as the base for the examples.wbl,#Tones

Inherent vowel

In open syllables the inherent vowel is usually transcribed and pronounced in Burmese as a, but very often reduced phonetically to ə. So ka is written by simply using the consonant letter.

က ka [U+1000 MYANMAR LETTER KA]

In closed syllables, the inherent vowel is pronounced as one of ɪ, e, a, or ɛ, depending on the final consonant that follows, eg. နှစ်

Vowel signs

Non-inherent vowel sounds that follow a consonant can be represented using vowel signs, eg.

ကိ ki [U+1000 MYANMAR LETTER KA + U+102D MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN I]

Burmese vowel signs are all combining characters. All vowel signs are stored after the base consonant, and the glyph rendering system takes care of the positioning at display time. Some input systems may allow the user to type a pre-base vowel before the base consonant, but it is still stored after.

An orthography that uses vowel signs is different from one that uses simple diacritics or letters for vowels in that the vowel signs are generally attached to the syllable, rather than just applied to the letter of the immediately preceding consonant. This means that pre-base vowel signs and the left glyph of circumgraphs appears before a whole consonant cluster if it is rendered as a conjunct (see prebase_vowels). Vowel sign components may be used on their own, or in combination with others (see composite_vowels).

Three vowel signs are spacing marks, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.

The pronunciation of the vowel sign often depends on whether it appears in an open or closed syllable, eg. compare the following, which are open and closed, respectively.

ဆိုး ဆိုင်

Open syllables typically contain plain vowels, while closed ones contain diphthongs.

The 'primary' vowels have 'short' and 'long' written forms that hark back to the earlier Indic script origins, but the distinction is used nowadays for indicating different tones only. For example, compare the tones in the open syllables at the beginning of these 2 words.

မိနစ် မီ

Combining marks used for vowels

Burmese uses the following dedicated combining marks for vowels.

ါ [U+102B MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN TALL AA] is just an alternative shape for ာ [U+102C MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN AA]. See shape_variants.

် [U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT] is more typically used to indicate a final consonant in a syllable, but it is used as part of several composite vowels. 

Consonants pronounced as vowels

In closed syllables when followed by the inherent vowel, ွ [U+103D MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL WA] may be pronounced as the vowel ʊ, rather than the glide w, eg. နွမ်း

အ [U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] on its own represents the standalone version of the inherent vowel, ʔa.   It is used as a base for other standalone vowels.

ယ [U+101A MYANMAR LETTER YA] is used as part of a composite vowel, eg. စံပယ်

Pre-base vowel sign

Burmese has only one vowel sign that appears to the left of the base consonant letter or cluster, see fig_prebase.

details

အမေ

This is a combining mark that is always stored after the base consonant. The rendering process places the glyph before the base consonant or cluster.

The vowel sign is actually placed before the start of an orthographic syllable. In fig_prebase_cluster the sequence of glyphs for the orthographic syllable is rendered VCC, whereas the pronunciation is CCV. In clusters with 3 consonants, it will still be rendered before the consonants.

details

အငွေ့

Some input methods may allow the user to type this vowel before the consonant, whereas others will expect it to be typed after, per the stored order.

Composite vowels

There are no single-character circumgraphs in Burmese text, but vowel components do appear on multiple sides of the base to represent a single vowel (or diphthong). This is achieved by adding multiple combining marks after the base in memory. Again, the base may be a single consonant, or it may be a stacked consonant cluster.

details

ကြော်

Vowels represented by combinations of the previously mentioned characters:

In the sequence ော် [U+1031 MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN E + U+102C MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN AA + U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT], the asat is added to indicate the low tone. Otherwise, it is the same vowel.

Characters that don't appear in the combinations:

Standalone vowels

Vowel signs

အိ␣အီ␣အု␣အူ␣အေ␣အဲ␣အ␣အာ␣အါ

Myanmar represents standalone vowel sounds using အ [U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] as a base for vowel signs, eg. အိတ် This is classed as a consonant rather than a vowel by the Burmese, and carries the inherent vowel when used alone, eg. အတန်း

details

အုန်းသီး

Independent vowels

ဣ␣ဤ␣ဥ␣ဦ␣ဧ␣ဩ␣ဪ

Myanmar also has a set of independent vowel letters used to represent standalone vowels, but only in certain words – typically Indian loan words.

details

ဩဂုတ်

Each letter represents a specific vowel+tone combination (see the accent marks in the list below). Not all vowel+tones combinations are represented.

ဧရာဝတီ ဩဂုတ် ဤ

Sequences of characters can be combined to look like a few of the independent vowels, eg. သြော် [U+101E MYANMAR LETTER SA + U+103C MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL RA + U+1031 MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN E + U+102C MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN AA + U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT] can look very similar to or the same as ဪ [U+102A MYANMAR LETTER AU]. The Unicode Standard strongly recommends to only use the single code point for each independent vowel. See encoding.

Shape variants

Tall AA. There are two forms of the -a vowel sign in Burmese. The combination ဝာ [U+101D MYANMAR LETTER WA + U+102C MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN AA] (wa) can be hard to distinguish from တ [U+1010 MYANMAR LETTER TA], so a taller glyph is used for the vowel to avoid confusion, ie. ဝါ [U+101D MYANMAR LETTER WA + U+102B MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN TALL AA]. This glyph, whether alone or as part of a complex vowel, is used after the following consonants:

For example, ပေါင် Where there is no ambiguity, however, the normal shape is used, eg. ပြောင်းဖူး

Whereas in Unicode 5.0 the choice of appropriate form was left to the font or implementation during rendering, such contextual decisions are not appropriate for Sgaw Karen and other minority scripts, which only use the tall form, so ါ [U+102B MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN TALL AA​] was added to Unicode 5.1 as a separate character, and needs to be typed explicitly.u,648

Displaced U vowel signs. The vowel signs ု [U+102F MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN U​] and ူ [U+1030 MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN UU​], which normally appear below a consonant, are displayed to the right if something else intrudes on that space. Examples include

• a stacked consonant eg. စက္ကူ
• a medial consonant eg. အဖြူ
• a consonant with a 'descender' eg. အညို

There are no special characters for these forms. The shape is produced automatically by the font.

Vowel sounds mapped to characters

This section maps Burmese vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Myanmar orthography, grouped by open ( o ), or closed ( c ) syllables, or as a standalone vowel ( s ).. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Basic Burmese consonants

Native Burmese words use a subset of the consonants that make up the traditional articulatory arrangement of indic scripts.

Other consonant sounds

Voicing

Unvoiced syllable initial consonants are typically pronounced with voicing when they appear in non-initial syllables of a word or in particle suffixes, unless they follow a syllable with stopped tone or follow the အ [U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] prefix. Aspirated consonants lose their aspiration at the same time. For example, သတင်းစာ farmer is pronounced θədɪ́ɴzà not θətɪ́ɴsà. However, because of the rule about the stopped tone (ie. a syllable ending in a plosive consonant), တစ်ဆယ် ten is pronounced təʔsʰɛ̀ not təʔzɛ̀.

Note that care needs to be taken with compound words, since they contain more than one word-initial syllable, eg. နားထောင် listen is pronounced nátʰàʊɴ not nádàʊɴ .m,175-6

There is also an irregular pattern of voicing initial consonants, particularly with place names. Mesher provides examples of words beginning with စ [U+1005 MYANMAR LETTER CA] ပ [U+1015 MYANMAR LETTER PA] တ [U+1010 MYANMAR LETTER TA] and ထ [U+1011 MYANMAR LETTER THA], eg. စေတီ table is pronounced zèdì not sèdì ; ပုဂံ Pagan/Bagan is pronounced bəgàɴ not pəgàɴ; ထားဝယ် Tavoy/Dawei is pronounced dəwɛ̀ not tʰəwɛ̀.m,251

Consonant clusters

Onset consonants

Unicode has the following, dedicated combining characters for the second letter in a syllable-onset cluster. The virama should not be used.

The following panel lists a number of syllable-onset clusters which are not pronounced as you might expect.

Medial YA and RA. ျ [U+103B MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL YA] and ြ [U+103C MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL RA] are both pronounced j by default, eg. ပျော် ပြည်

However, when preceded by a velar stop these characters produce palatalisation as tɕ, tɕʰ, dʑ, ɲ, eg. ကျောင်း ကြက် ဂျပန်

Medial HA. ှ [U+103E MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA] is used to create aspirated versions of consonants, eg. မှာ See aspiration for more details. It also creates the sound ʃ in the combinations ရှ [U+101B MYANMAR LETTER RA + U+103E MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA] and လျှ [U+101C MYANMAR LETTER LA + U+103B MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL YA + U+103E MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA] eg. ရှိတယ်

The -h medial is typically transcribed before the letter it modifies, unlike the order of characters as typed or stored in memory. For example, မြွှ [U+1019 MYANMAR LETTER MA + U+103C MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL RA + U+103D MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL WA + U+103E MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA] (pronounced m̥w) is transcribed hmrw. For more information about character order, see cporder.

Medial WA. ွ [U+103D MYANMAR CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL WA] represents the w glide, eg. နွား

However, it may also represent the vowel ʊ (see vowelsigns).

Multiple medials. It is possible to find 2 or 3 medials in an onset cluster, eg. (click on words to see components) လျှာ လျှင် မြွေ

Final consonants

In native Burmese, 9 characters (5 nasals, င ဉ ည န မ NGA, NYA, NNYA, NA and MA, and 4 stops, က စ တ ပ KA, CA, TA, PA) appear in syllable final position.

In final position, nasals are pronounced as a nasalization of the previous vowel, eg. ရင် and all stops are pronounced ʔ, eg. မတ်

Syllable-final consonants carry a visible mark called asat (အသတ် ʔa̰θaʔ) to indicate that the inherent vowel is killed, eg. စက်တင်ဘာ

် [U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT​] is a character introduced in Unicode version 5.1 for this purpose. It is always visible, and does not produce stacking.

Some syllables ending in nasal consonants use ံ [U+1036 MYANMAR SIGN ANUSVARA] rather than the ordinary consonant sign, eg. compare သိမ်း သုံး

(Note that the ASAT is also used in 3 composite vowels to produce specific vowel+tone combinations. See composite_vowels.)

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Burmese consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Myanmar orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, Sanskrit, etc.

Changes in Unicode 5.1

In Unicode 5.0, ် [U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT​] did not exist, and ္ [U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA] had to be used for both visible and non-visible viramas. This approach was problematic in that, since there are no spaces between words, it is not easy to automatically ascertain whether a virama should appear above a consonant or cause the stacking effect. For example, should my sequence of characters appear like this, အမ်မီတာ, or like this အမ္မီတာ? To get around this in Unicode 5.0 you needed to use a ‌ [U+200C ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER] (ZWNJ) after the virama if you wanted it to remain visible (ie. the first example above would have been transcribed as ʔmˣmïta and the second as ʔm͓mïta). The non-joiner prevents stacking. In practice, this meant that there were very many ZWNJ characters in Burmese text, since there are many syllable-final consonants needing ASAT, and typing in the Myanmar script was therefore much more time-consuming than it needed to be.

Unicode 5.1 also introduced dedicated medial consonants. This makes it easier to type Myanmar text, but also allows for easy distinction of subjoined variants of these consonants rather than the usual medial forms.

One or two other characters were introduced, such as the TALL AA.

Independent vowels

It is strongly recommended to use the single code points on the left, rather than the sequences on the right, because they are not made the same by normalisation. Therefore the content will be regarded as different, which will affect searching and other operations on the text.

In the following case, the precomposed character decomposes in NFD, and re-forms again in NFC. It is generally recommended to use the precomposed character, but both forms are canonically equivalent.

Code point sequences

The following indicates the expected ordering of Unicode characters for Burmese. The labels are those used for the Unicode Indic Syllabic Categories. Follow the links to see what characters are represented by a given label.

1. Kinzi, ie. င်္ [U+1004 LETTER NGA + U+103A SIGN ASAT + U+1039 SIGN VIRAMA]
2. Consonant (34) | Consonant_Placeholder | Vowel_Independent (8)
3. Invisible_Stacker ( Consonant (29) | Vowel_Independent (1) )
4. Pure_Killer
5. Consonant_Medial (4)
   1. ျ [U+103B CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL YA] Pure_Killer ?
   2. ြ [U+103C CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL RA]
   3. ွ [U+103D CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL WA]
   4. ှ [U+103E CONSONANT SIGN MEDIAL HA]
6. Vowel_Dependent (8)
   1. ေ [U+1031 VOWEL SIGN E]
   2. ိ [U+102D VOWEL SIGN I] | ီ [U+102E VOWEL SIGN II] | ဲ [U+1032 VOWEL SIGN AI]
   3. ု [U+102F VOWEL SIGN U] | ူ [U+1030 VOWEL SIGN UU]
   4. ( ာ [U+102C VOWEL SIGN AA] | ါ [U+102B VOWEL SIGN TALL AA] ) Pure_Killer ?
7. Bindu
8. Tone_Mark
9. Visarga

Unfortunately, normalization may result in a different order. In particular, ် [U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT​] occurs after ့ [U+1037 MYANMAR SIGN DOT BELOW​] in normalized text. Applications such as fonts should still handle this alternative order, since the sequences are canonically equivalent.

Ordering characters as shown above avoids potential ambiguities and maximises the likelihood of success when rendering the text.

Context-based shaping & positioning

Font styling & weight

Observation: Italicisation is used in Wikipedia for quotations and for citing the titles of articles or publications.

Grapheme clusters

(Base Combining_mark*) | Right_spacing_combining_mark | Tone_mark

Grapheme clusters only equate to Burmese typographic units some of the time. Furthermore, grapheme cluster boundaries for Myanmar text follow a specially called-out set of rules that include exceptions to the norm. Specifically, grapheme boundaries are introduced before spacing combining marks that are rendered to the right of the base, and before tone marks. These exceptions were introduced to support cursor movement, but are not useful for things like line-breaking.

ကား

When a grapheme cluster is comprised of a base plus combining marks it may include zero or more of the following types of character:

1. Medial consonants [4] (see onsets)
2. Dependent vowels [6], but not spacing vowel signs that are rendered to the right (see combiningvowels)
3. Tone mark [1] (see tone_marks)
4. Final consonants [1] (see finals)
5. Pure killer [1] (see finals)
6. Invisible stacker [1] (see clusters)

Burmese grapheme clusters that include a syllable nucleus usually begin with a consonant, but can also begin with an independent vowel. If one classes အ [U+1021 MYANMAR LETTER A] as an independent vowel, it is one that can be followed by vowel signs and tone marks; but otherwise independent vowels are typically followed by a tone mark only, if anything. Multiple vowel signs may follow a base.

Syllable codas, if not written using the anusvara combining mark, are normally written using a consonant letter followed by ် [U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT​], which is always visible, and which doesn't create conjuncts.

The invisible stacker ္ [U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA​] is used alone after a consonant to create a conjunct with a following grapheme cluster (see below).

The combining marks used in Burmese that start a new grapheme cluster include the following (there are others in the Myanmar Unicode blocks but they are used for other languages):

1. Dependent vowels [2] that are rendered to the right and spacing (see combiningvowels)
2. Tone mark [1] (see tone_marks)

The following examples show a variety of grapheme clusters:

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	ကြေးမုံ
	ထမင်းဆိုင်
	အားကစား
	ပျော့တယ်
	ပိန္နဲသီး
	အင်္ဂါ

Larger typographic units

(Base Invisible_Stacker)* Grapheme_cluster

Stacks generally appear only in word medial positions in Burmese (and do not occur across word boundaries, as they do in some other scripts). The kind of typographic unit that includes stacks cannot be realised using Unicode grapheme clusters, which create break after a virama rather than including the following consonants.

Editorial operations that change the visual appearance of the text, such as letter-spacing, first-letter highlighting, line-breaking, and justification, should never split conjunct forms apart. For this reason, an alternative way of segmenting graphemes is needed. This may not apply, however, for some other operations such as cursor movement or backwards delete.

Where conjuncts appear, a typographic unit contains multiple grapheme clusters. The non-final grapheme clusters all end with ္ [U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA], and the final grapheme cluster begins with a consonant.

The kinzi is the sequence င်္ [U+1004 MYANMAR LETTER NGA + U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT + U+1039 MYANMAR SIGN VIRAMA], and is unusual in that the first consonant in the cluster appears above the second, rather than the normal arrangement where the second is subjoined to the first. It is also unusual in that it does this even though the first consonant is followed by an asat sign. Nevertheless, it and the following consonant still follow the general orthographic syllable pattern.

The following words contain typographic units which begin with a consonant cluster:

Click on the text version of these words to see more detail about the composition.

	ကြေးမုံ
	ထမင်းဆိုင်
	အားကစား
	ပျော့တယ်
	ပိန္နဲသီး
	အင်္ဂါ

Browser behaviour

Cursor movement. Move the cursor through the text.
Gecko steps through the whole text using combining character sequences (CCS), rather than grapheme clusters. In other words, it doesn't stop before spacing combining characters rendered to the right of the base, or before tone marks, but treats them as part of the typographic unit that includes the base. It takes 2 steps to get through the stacks, one grapheme cluster at a time. Blink steps through all words using grapheme clusters, however this means that the cursor appears to stand still sometimes, or appears in the middle of a sequence. WebKit steps through using CSS's but also treats orthographic syllables as a single unit (ie. it steps over a stack and all associated combining characters in one jump).

Selection. Place the cursor next to a character and hold down shift while pressing an arrow key.
The behaviour is the same as for cursor movement. This has the effect of sometimes appearing to highlight backwards in Blink.

Deletion. Forward deletion works in the same way as cursor movement. The backspace key deletes code point by code point, except that WebKit deletes both the virama and the ZWJ at the same time.

Line-break. See this test. The CSS sets the value of the line-break property to anywhere. Pad the start of the container with characters to slowly push the text off the first line.
Gecko moves stacks to the next line as a single unit, except when the kinzi is involved, and otherwise the break points are assigned after each CCS, rather than by grapheme cluster. Blink and WebKit move stacks to the next line as a single unit, but otherwise moves text a grapheme cluster at a time – which means that combining characters can sit alone at the beginning of a line.

Word boundaries

Myanmar script doesn't visually separate words in a phrase.

There is, however, a concept of words. Native Burmese words are typically monosyllabic, but there are also multisyllabic words, and these should not be broken during line wrapping.

Consonants are not stacked across word boundaries. As consequence, it is easier to apply word-based line-breaking.

Phrase & section boundaries

Spaces are used to separate phrases, rather than words. Phrase length is variable. Examples can be seen in the extract from the Declaration of Human Rights at the top of the page.

Punctuation is commonly limited to ၊ [U+104A MYANMAR SIGN LITTLE SECTION] and ။ [U+104B MYANMAR SIGN SECTION], with significance close to comma and full stop, respectively.

Bracketed text

Burmese commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.

Quotations & citations

Burmese texts typically use quotation marks around quotations. Of course, due to keyboard design, quotations may also be surrounded by ASCII double and single quote marks.

Quoted speech may also be slanted (see fontstyle).

Emphasis

tbd

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

Inline notes & annotations

tbd

Other punctuation

tbd

Other inline text decoration

tbd

Line breaking & hyphenation

If it is necessary to break text within a phrase, breaks can occur at syllable boundaries, but not within a word. The difficulty is that there is no visual information about which sequences of syllables consitute a word.

One way of detecting line-break opportunities is to use a dictionary to search for polysyllabic words, and then break at syllable boundaries outside the word. This approach may, however, run into problems when uncommon words or new words are used, especially those borrowed foreign terms.

A common approach is to break lines at phrase boundaries and then use justification is to adjust inter-phrase spacing.h,12

An alternative is to indicate break points by inserting ​ [U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE] (ZWSP) between words when the content is developed.

Otherwise, you could tie the syllables in a polysyllabic word together using ⁠ [U+2060 WORD JOINER] while authoring the content. This requires less intervention than adding ZWSP, since the number of polysyllabic words is smaller than the whole. Problems with that approach, currently, are that applications must be able to ignore the word joiner for searching, sorting, and the like. For this reason Hosken recommends against using it, and recommends instead the use of a dictionary with ZWSP backup for words that the dictionary doesn't handle well. However, it's not clear which words a dictionary will fail to recognise when the text is used across different platforms and applications, so this is not an ideal solution either – not to mention that it is difficult for an author to know in advance which words will cause problems and which won't .h,12

Text alignment & justification

Justification may begin by adjusting inter-phrase spacing.h,12

Text spacing

tbd

Baselines, line height, etc.

Burmese uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

Burmese requires more vertical space than Latin text. To give an approximate idea, fig_baselines compares Latin and Burmese glyphs from Noto fonts. The basic height of Burmese letters is typically around the Latin x-height, however overall letter height and combining marks, extend beyond the Latin ascenders and descenders, creating a need for larger line spacing.

fig_baselines_other shows similar comparisons for the Tharlon and Myanmar Text fonts.

Counters, lists, etc.

You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles..

The Burmese language uses numeric and alphabetic styles.

Prefixes and suffixes

The most common approach to writing lists in Burmese puts the counters in parentheses. An alternate style uses ။ [U+104B MYANMAR SIGN SECTION] after the counter. Full stops are not commonly used.

Examples:

Styling initials

tbd

Notes, footnotes, etc