What ϣ means
It writes the “sh” sound in Coptic.
Greek-based Egyptian writing was developing by the third century B.C. Coptic paired Greek letters with signs from Demotic, an earlier Egyptian script, to spell sounds Greek lacked; ϣ is one. By the third century A.D., Coptic scripture and church services gave it a religious and literary setting. After the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the spread of Arabic, Coptic gradually receded from everyday speech but remained in church use.
Textual and language-specific, usually scholarly or liturgical.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ϣ look different in different fonts?
It can: fonts draw different outlines for the same encoded letter.
How to type ϣ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 03E3, then Alt+X to get ϣ.
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 “coptic small letter shei”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 03e3, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ϣCSS
\03E3Coptic keyboard
Use a Coptic layout; some put it on an alternate key layer.
Unicode input
Enter U+03E3 through your system’s Unicode method.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ϣ
HTML hex
ϣ
CSS content
content: "\03E3";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%CF%A3
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
2
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.