What ｂ means
It is a wider form of the Latin letter b.
In Japanese mixed-width computing, full-width Roman letters sat alongside kana and kanji in a regular grid. The documented standards and word-processing history reaches 1978–79; the layout supported alignment and interchange.
Unicode keeps the full-width and ordinary forms for round-trip conversion. By the early 2010s, vaporwave used full-width letters as spaced, retro display text. That is a visual style, not a new meaning.
Why is fullwidth b different from b?
The width can disappear when text is normalized.
NFKC, a compatibility normalization form, maps ｂ to b. A search, identifier, or import system that applies it can remove the visual distinction.
Part of the collection
Who writes ｂ
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Don't confuse it with
2
Questions people ask
1is ｂ a font
No. ｂ is a separate character. A font draws its shape; the encoded character carries the width distinction.
More like this
10
How to type or find ｂ
- Also called
- zenkaku b · full-width b
- Search it as
- zenkaku · fullwidth · wide b · vaporwave · wide text
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ｂ\FF42Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.