As @chch mentions, the parent probably meant bouten/etc. I couldn't find an English article on it, but the Japanese Wikipedia page has examples and some cool CS

As @chch mentions, the parent probably meant bouten/etc. I couldn't find an English article on it, but the Japanese Wikipedia page has examples and some cool CSS styling info that's related: https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/圏点 https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/圏点 As for katakana, it really does depend. For common or short words, people usually don't have a problem, but if you throw a whole katakana sentence at a Japanese person they will often stumble and reading speed noticably decreases.