What means
They let a text display draw with pixels. The Kaypro 2/84 graphics grid appeared in 1984. Each text cell held eight on/off dots in a 2 × 4 grid; 80 × 25 cells gave a 160 × 100 drawing area. Count cells across each row from top to bottom: fills positions 2, 6 and 8.
Semigraphics let software build pictures from character cells. Adjacent tiles extend a drawing. Unicode preserves this Kaypro pattern for screen recreations and text-mode art.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 1CD91, then Alt+X to get .
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “block octant-268”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 1cd91, then Enter or Space.
HTML
𜶑CSS
\1CD91Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
𜶑
HTML hex
𜶑
CSS content
content: "\1CD91";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F0%9C%B6%91
1
On screen
1
Code points
2
JS .length
4
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.