It denoted the sonus medius, a short close vowel sound of a quality between i and u.

In modern transcriptions and editions of ancient Greek epigraphic text that use consonantal heta, in any of its shapes, the letter is most often rendered simply with a Latin h, both in Latin transliteration and in Greek scholarly transcriptions (using lowercase in Greek, so that Latin h and Greek ? are distinct). Some authors have also adopted the Heraclean "tack"