Upper-left enclosure operator

Read the enclosing part first, then the part inside. ⿸ introduces two components in an ideographic description sequence, or IDS: a written recipe for a character’s shape. The first component extends across the top and down the left of the second, leaving the enclosure open toward the lower right.

For example, ⿸厂人 describes 仄. 厂 is the outer part and 人 sits inside it. ⿸ itself is an instruction about their arrangement; it is not an extra stroke to add to the finished character.

This notation was introduced to describe characters that had no encoded character of their own. It also lets people explain and analyse the structure of existing characters. The operator family came from Chinese character standards and was used in the GBK character encoding.