Block Octant-12468

𜶘 is a mosaic tile for terminal graphics: five of its eight parts are filled so it can join a low-resolution picture made of text. A tile supplies one patch of the image; aligned neighboring cells extend the pattern.

Text symbol

What 𜶘 means

Semigraphics are pictures built from small blocks in text cells. A Kaypro 10 guide from 1983 describes eight on/off pixels arranged in two columns and four rows inside each character cell. A 2021 Unicode proposal traces these octant tiles to Kaypro CP/M computers, where their patterns sat above basic ASCII but could still be saved in text files. Unicode preserves the design for legacy screen graphics.

Part of the collection

🬀

Retro Computer & Teletext Symbols

Questions people ask

Why does 𜶘 show as a box on some devices?

It is recent: Unicode added it in version 16.0 (2024), and phones and computers whose fonts are older than that have nothing to draw it with. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.