What 🬣 means
It’s a picture tile, not a message. A sextant divides a character cell into six blocks, in two columns and three rows; 136 names the filled sections.
Teletext sent text and simple graphics to televisions; by 1974, the UK broadcast specification included 2-by-3 mosaics. Home computers used them too. France’s Minitel, a service for viewing information pages over phone lines, used these mosaics from the early 1980s until 2012.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why can teletext show gaps inside a mosaic?
A separate control code did it. The 1974 UK Broadcast Teletext Specification used the code to switch mosaics between joined and separated display. 🬣 encodes the fill pattern, not that setting.
How to type 🬣
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 1FB23, 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 sextant-136”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 1fb23, then Enter or Space.
HTML
🬣CSS
\1FB23Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
🬣
HTML hex
🬣
CSS content
content: "\1FB23";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F0%9F%AC%A3
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.