Across many languages, it is most commonly represented orthographically as ⟨ü⟩ (in German, Turkish, Estonian and Hungarian) or ⟨y⟩ (in Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish and Albanian) but also as ⟨u⟩ (in French and Dutch and the Kernewek Kemmyn standard of Cornish); ⟨iu⟩/⟨yu⟩ (in the romanization of various Asian languages); ⟨уь⟩ (in Cyrillic-based writing systems such as that for Chechen); or ⟨ү⟩ (in Cyrillic-based writing systems such as that for Tatar).

The close front rounded vowel is the vocalic equivalent of the labialized palatal approximant [ɥ].

The close front compressed vowel is typically transcribed in IPA simply as ⟨y⟩, and that is the convention used in this article.

The spread-lip diacritic ⟨  ͍⟩ may also be used with a rounded vowel letter ⟨y͍⟩ as an ad hoc symbol, though technically 'spread' means unrounded.

Because front rounded vowels are assumed to have compression, and few descriptions cover the distinction, some of the following may actually have protrusion.