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broken bar

Broken bar

¦ is the broken bar, also called the broken vertical bar or parted rule. It is a vertical line with a gap in the middle, and it is a separate character from the solid pipe |. People mostly use it as a visual divider. The surprise is that some keyboards print ¦ on the key that actually types |, so the broken look alone doesn't tell you which character you have.

Text symbol

Also called: broken vertical bar · vertical broken bar · parted rule
Search it as: broken pipe · ¦ · alt 0166
Shows up in: Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ¦ means

No, code and command lines need the solid pipe |. The pipe | is the ASCII character U+007C, and shells and programming languages read it as an operator. ¦ is a Latin-1 sign, and those same tools treat it as ordinary text, so swapping one for the other breaks the command. Some fonts and older displays drew | with a gap in it, and that is how the two got mixed up.

A plain technical sign. Using it in place of | reads as a character mix-up, not a style choice.

Never put ¦ where code expects |.

Don't confuse it with

Vertical Line

This is the solid pipe U+007C, which command lines and code expect. Some fonts draw it with a gap, so check the code point rather than trusting the shape.

Questions people ask

Why 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 00A6, 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 “broken bar”.

Linux

Ctrl+Shift+UType 00a6, then Enter or Space.

HTML

¦

CSS

\00A6

Windows

Hold **Alt** and type **0166** on the numeric keypad.

HTML

Type the entity **¦** in your HTML.

Keyboard labels

A key marked ¦ may type | instead. A 2007 Unicode mailing-list report described French AltGr+6 doing exactly this.

Codes and encoding1 code points

HTML decimal

HTML hex

CSS content

content: "\00A6";

Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.

URL encoded

%C2%A6

On screen

Code points

JS .length

UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

Stars & signs805 symbols

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