Full-Width and Half-Width Converter (Zenkaku ↔ Hankaku)
Convert full-width letters, digits, symbols, spaces and katakana to half width or back, and hiragana to katakana. Half-width katakana with ﾞ and ﾟ are joined correctly (ｶﾞ ↔ ガ).
What is converted
- Each character changes into its pair in the Unicode standard: Ａ–Ｚ, ａ–ｚ, ０–９ and the full-width forms of the ASCII symbols, the ideographic space (U+3000), ￥ and the other full-width signs, and the half-width katakana with 。「」、・ー.
- Half-width katakana write ﾞ and ﾟ as separate characters. They are joined with the letter before them (ｶﾞ → ガ, ﾊﾟ → パ, ｳﾞ → ヴ) and split again on the way back.
- Characters without a pair stay as they are: ヵ, ヶ, ヮ, ヰ and ヱ have no half-width form, hiragana have none either, and 〜 (wave dash) and “ ” are not full-width forms of ~ and ".
- Everything runs in your browser. The text you enter is not sent to LeedyBox or saved.
Source: Unicode Character Database 18.0 (UnicodeData.txt) · Last checked:
Wrong result? If a character is converted wrongly or not at all, email us the character, the options you chose and the result you expected, so we can fix it.
Does a sentence on this page sound unnatural in your language? Let us know that too.
How to use
- Paste the text into "Input".
- Choose "Half width" or "Full width" and tick the kinds of characters to convert. Katakana start unticked for half width, because half-width katakana are rarely what a form wants; tick the box if it is.
- To turn hiragana into katakana or the other way round, pick the direction under "Hiragana and katakana". It works with either width setting.
- The output updates as you type or change an option. Check it, then click "Copy result".
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between full-width and half-width characters?
In Japanese, Chinese and Korean text every character fills a square cell. Full-width Latin letters and digits (ＡＢＣ１２３) fill the same cell as a kanji, while half-width ones (ABC123) take half of it. They look alike but are different characters with different codes, so a search for ABC may not find ＡＢＣ, and a form that checks for half-width digits rejects full-width ones.
Why does ｶﾞ become one character, and ガ two?
Half-width katakana have no voiced letters of their own. ガ is written as ｶ followed by the separate voiced mark ﾞ, and パ as ﾊ followed by ﾟ. The tool joins the pair into one full-width letter and splits it again when converting to half width, so the number of characters changes.
Why are 〜 and curly quotes not converted?
The wave dash 〜 (U+301C) is a Japanese punctuation mark, not the full-width tilde ～ (U+FF5E), and the curly quotes “ ” ‘ ’ are not full-width forms either. Unicode pairs only ～ with ~, ＂ with " and ＇ with '. Replace the others by hand if a system needs plain ASCII.
Why do I see ¥ where I expected a backslash?
The older Japanese character set JIS X 0201 put the yen sign at the code that ASCII uses for the backslash, so some Japanese fonts still draw the backslash (U+005C) as ¥. The tool converts ＼ to \ and ￥ to the yen sign ¥ (U+00A5), as Unicode pairs them; what you see depends on the font.
Can it convert half-width Korean letters or other characters?
No. It covers full-width ASCII, the ideographic space, the full-width signs ￠￡￢￣￤￥￦ and half-width katakana. The half-width Hangul letters and the half-width arrows and shapes of the same Unicode block are rare and are left unchanged.
Is the text I enter sent anywhere?
No. The conversion runs in your browser, and the page does not save what you type.