What ᫅ means
The accent mark on the preceding letter. Its position ties cancellation to one written accent in the Latin-letter form of Japanese.
Unicode cites Samuel Martin’s 2004 Japanese grammar: square brackets mark fixed-stress ellipsis, while parentheses mark mobile-stress ellipsis—omissions where the accent stays fixed or shifts.
Technical notation for Japanese transliteration and accent marks.
It targets the preceding accent; it does not enclose a word.
Don't confuse it with
1[ ]
Ordinary [ ] frame text; ᫅ is one combining mark that applies to a preceding accent.
Combination ideas
1The acute accent on hutarí is suppressed before imásu in this Japanese example.
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 1AC5, 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 “combining square brackets above”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 1ac5, then Enter or Space.
HTML
᫅CSS
\1AC5Sequence
In the Latin-letter sequence, place ᫅ after the accented letter it applies to.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
᫅
HTML hex
᫅
CSS content
content: "\1AC5";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E1%AB%85
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.