In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), minuscule ə is used to represent the mid central vowel or a schwa.

It was invented by Johann Andreas Schmeller for the reduced vowel at the end of some German words and first used in his 1820s works on the Bavarian dialects.

The letter was used in the 1992 Chechen Latin alphabet proposal where it represented the glottal stop, /ʔ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨tt⟩ in GA "button".

This niche usage is controversial—as well as mainly limited to written language, as there is no real consensus on how the -ə suffix should be pronounced—and has been criticized by the Accademia della Crusca.

The president of the Accademia opposed its use,[5] and the Accademia answered to a question posed by the Equal Opportunities Committee of the Supreme Court of Cassation for the introduction of the schwa in juridical language, stating that "juridical language is not the place to experiment with minority-led innovations that would lead to irregularity and idiolects".