What ꩜ means
It organizes Cham text; it does not represent a sound.
Where does ꩜ come from? The oldest known Cham text, inscription C.174 from Quảng Nam, dates to the 4th or 5th century CE. It begins with the Sanskrit word siddham (“success”), followed by a spiral.
In Tibetan writing, head marks signal that text is beginning. Unicode compares their function with ꩜’s section-opening role.
Formal, structural punctuation for Cham writing.
Don't confuse it with
4Combination ideas
1꩜ with danda: suggested section opener followed by a phrase break.
Questions 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 AA5C, 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 “cham punctuation spiral”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType aa5c, then Enter or Space.
HTML
꩜CSS
\AA5CCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
꩜
HTML hex
꩜
CSS content
content: "\AA5C";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%EA%A9%9C
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.