Archaic forms of the water ripple have unique variations, however, the later standard usage of the hieroglyph was translated to the single-phoneme N. This type of single-consonant phonetic hieroglyph was used to spell names and it’s found in many royal inscriptions such as king Tut’s cartouche.

In addition to the single letter N, the water ripple is majorly used as a preposition broadly translated to in, and it's found a total of 203 times in the Rosetta Stone.

Another major usage of the horizontal water ripple is as a non-phonetic determinant to provide context. In this meaning, it is used to separate hieroglyphs "blocks" with its own ideology, and implied meaning and usage: "waters".