What ⠊ means
In English Braille, ⠊ is the letter i.
Charles Barbier devised “night writing,” a silent raised-dot code for French soldiers. Louis Braille encountered it at a Paris school for blind youth in 1821. Barbier’s 12-dot sound code was too large for one fingertip, so Braille made a six-dot alphabet and adapted Barbier’s board-and-stylus frame. Its design lives on in the hinged Braille slate used to emboss paper. English Braille, American Edition, was first published in 1932.
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 280A, 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 “braille pattern dots-24”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 280a, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⠊CSS
\280ACodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⠊
HTML hex
⠊
CSS content
content: "\280A";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%A0%8A
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.