What ⿹ means
Read it as “enclose from the upper right.”
In ⿹弋工, 弋 is the enclosing part and 工 is inside; together, the description represents the shape of 式. “Upper right” tells you where the enclosure lies, not where to start writing the strokes.
A string like this is an ideographic description sequence (IDS), and ⿹ is an ideographic description character (IDC). These sequences let you describe a character through its parts, even when it has no encoded character of its own. They describe shape, not pronunciation or meaning.
Will the parts become one character?
No. The sequence describes a character; it does not encode it.
⿹弋工 and 式 are different text strings. Software may show the description as separate symbols or as a diagram; Unicode does not require it to combine into one glyph. To write the actual character in ordinary text, use 式.
Part of the collection
Related characters
2
Worth knowing
- A 1972 study in Taiwan explored character-composition operators. In 1989, a computer system used related operators to describe characters missing from Big5, an older Chinese character encoding.
Questions people ask
1Why does ⿹ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Ideographic Description Characters 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
9
⿴Ideographic Description Character Full Surround
⿷Ideographic Description Character Surround From Left
⿺Ideographic Description Character Surround From Lower Left
⿸Ideographic Description Character Surround From Upper Left
ᄀHangul Choseong Kiyeok
ᄁHangul Choseong Ssangkiyeok
ᄂHangul Choseong Nieun
ᄃHangul Choseong Tikeut
ᄄHangul Choseong SsangtikeutHow to type or find ⿹
- Search it as
- ideographic description · IDS · IDC · character components
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⿹\2FF9Why is ⿹ a box on my screen?
fsymbols draws rare signs with its own fonts, so they show here even where your device has none. An app or website without such a font shows an empty box (□) or a question mark instead. Turn our fonts off to see each sign as your device draws it by itself: a box here means a box in your chats and documents too.
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.