What ⸶ means
It marks a sound as retracted in Palaeotype.
Ellis described the project in 1866; the earliest known exact-form example is from 1868, and his four-volume study of English pronunciation appeared in 1869.
Historical forms b⸶ and p⸶ put it after a consonant; they represent sounds made with the lower lip against the upper teeth. Palaeotype predated the IPA and influenced Henry Sweet’s Romic alphabet, which helped shape the IPA.
Specialist phonetics; fonts without its glyph may show a box.
Don't confuse it with
3Questions 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 2E36, 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 “dagger with left guard”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2e36, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⸶CSS
\2E36Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⸶
HTML hex
⸶
CSS content
content: "\2E36";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%B8%B6
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.