Ideographic Tally Mark Two

This Chinese tally mark records two in an East Asian system built from strokes of 正. It is not the everyday Chinese numeral 二.

Text symbol

What 𝍳 means

It marks the second step in a five-count tally.

正 means “correct” in Chinese; one of its five strokes is added for each counted item. Japan calls the method 正の字 (sei-no ji), and Chinese calls it 正字 (zhèng zì). One of the earliest examples cited in the 2016 Unicode proposal appears in a Japanese statistics book published in 1895.

Is 𝍳 a counting-rod numeral?

No. Rod numerals are a separate counting system.

Rod numerals use small rods arranged on a board to show numbers; 𝍳 instead belongs to the five-stroke tally and is not the everyday Chinese digit 二.

Part of the collection

𝋧

Ancient Number Systems

Don't confuse it with

Latin Capital Letter T

UTS #39 ties this tally mark's T-like shape to the letter, so it can pass for T in text.

Cyrillic Capital Letter Te

Cyrillic Capital Letter Te, a real letter that looks like Latin T. Typed by mistake or used to spoof words; 𝍳 is a counting sign.

Greek Capital Letter Tau

Greek capital tau, another T-like letter. Mixed into text it can pass for T, while 𝍳 is an ideographic tally mark.

Combination ideas

Five plus one more stroke records six.

Five plus two more strokes records seven.

Questions people ask

Why does 𝍳 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.