A voiceless palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in some vocal languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨c⟩.

It is common for the phonetic symbol ⟨c⟩ to be used to represent voiceless postalveolar affricate [t͡ʃ] or other similar affricates, for example in the Indic languages. This may be considered appropriate when the place of articulation needs to be specified and the distinction between plosive and affricate is not contrastive.

If distinction is necessary, a voiceless alveolo-palatal plosive may be transcribed ⟨t̠ʲ⟩ (retracted and palatalized ⟨t⟩). There is also a non-IPA letter U+0236 ȶ LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CURL; ⟨ȶ⟩ ("t", plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ⟨ɕ, ʑ⟩), which is used especially in sinological circles.

Features of a voiceless palatal stop:

There is also a voiceless post-palatal or pre-velar plosive in some languages, which is articulated slightly more back compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical palatal consonant, though not as back as the prototypical velar consonant. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have a separate symbol for that sound, though it can be transcribed as ⟨c̠⟩ (retracted ⟨c⟩) or ⟨k̟⟩ (advanced ⟨k⟩).

Especially in broad transcription, a voiceless post-palatal plosive may be transcribed as a palatalized voiceless velar plosive (⟨kʲ⟩.