What 监 means
It points to inspection or oversight, with confinement in certain compounds. In 监狱, the whole word means “prison”; reading 监 by itself is not enough to conclude that a message concerns detention.
Where did 监 come from?
Its ancestor depicts someone looking into a water basin. The reflection links the image to checking and inspection.
Surviving ancestral forms date to around 1250–1000 BCE, not to the modern simplified shape. A related mirror character, 鑑 (simplified 鉴), adds 金, the component for metal, to 監.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsIn 监测
Monitoring or measurement; inspection is directed at a process.
In 监狱
Prison; the compound names confinement.
In 国子监
Name of a historical imperial academy.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does 监 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 监
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 76D1, then Alt+X to get 监.
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 “cjk unified ideograph-76d1”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 76d1, then Enter or Space.
HTML
监CSS
\76D1Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
监
HTML hex
监
CSS content
content: "\76D1";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E7%9B%91
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.