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Potential spoilers for readers of Jojo, but in the top-left-hand corner of this picture there are dots above the word こいつ.

enter image description here

Why do some manga have dots above some of the words? I've only noticed this in Jojo so far but perhaps it's in other manga too.

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This is the Japanese version of [underlining]{LLLLLLLLLLL}. It's a way of marking a word for emphasis.

Update

The Japanese name for this is variously 圏点{けんてん} (literally "enclosing mark"), 傍点{ぼうてん} ("off-to-the-side mark"), or 脇点{わきてん} ("on-the-side mark"). The JA wikipedia has a good article about this.

Veteran user snailplane commented with this meta link, which shows how to use Japanese emphasis, like this: [強調]{﹅﹅}.

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  • meta.japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/806/…
    – user1478
    Oct 26, 2016 at 22:36
  • @snailplane, thanks, but what I was lamenting was the inability to use <u> or other underlining for non-Japanese text. This{LLLL} doesn't work, for instance.
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Oct 26, 2016 at 23:09
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    Hmm, how about [this]{LLLL}?
    – user1478
    Oct 26, 2016 at 23:11
  • @snailplane -- what did you do in your edit? It works now! But the side-by-side marked-up edit summary view doesn't show me any changes...??
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Oct 27, 2016 at 1:00
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    Sorry, I didn't have time to reply and explain. I'll do that now. The examples in the meta post have a zero-width space before the { to prevent it from working, as explained here, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to see what the markup looks like. You copied and pasted it including that zero-width space, which prevented it from working, but if you simply type it in, it should work fine.
    – user1478
    Oct 27, 2016 at 1:59
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I can't seem to load the picture myself, but it is probably used for emphasis. Similar to ALL CAPS or periods after single words like "OH. MY. GOSH." in English.

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