What ㆕ means
It marks step four in a return sequence. Kanbun is the Japanese practice of reading Classical Chinese in Japanese order; kaeriten return marks show where to go back through the text.
An early example of kaeriten is dated to 788. More complex forms took shape during Japan's Edo period. During the Edo and Meiji periods, the method was also applied to Dutch and English study texts.
Why does ㆕ look like 四?
It uses the shape of 四 for a reading mark. In Kanbun layout, it may sit small beside the line, while some fonts draw the glyph full-size.
A specialist reading-order mark used in Japanese annotations of Classical Chinese.
Use ordinary 四 for a quantity; ㆕ marks reading order.
Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
4
Questions people ask
1Why does ㆕ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Kanbun block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
More like this
10
How to type or find ㆕
- Search it as
- kaeriten · kaeriten-si · kanbun · return mark · 返り点 · 四点
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
㆕\3195Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.