What ⼁ means
It marks the line radical in a Han character index.
A radical is a component used to group characters in a dictionary; after choosing it, you count the character’s remaining strokes to narrow the lookup. The Kangxi radical 2 is an index label, not a sound or conversational message.
The Shuowen Jiezi, a Han-dynasty character dictionary completed in 121 CE, records 丨 in its own section and glosses it 上下通也, “connecting through up and down.” This documents the sign’s dictionary history by 121 CE, not when the stroke was first written. In the 18th century, the Kangxi Dictionary organized characters with a set of 214 radicals; other dictionaries can file a character under a different radical.
Keep ⼁ and 丨 separate
Although fonts may draw them alike, ⼁ is the radical character and 丨 is the unified ideograph used as text. Unicode distinguishes their roles: one names an indexing component, while the other is a Han character. A picker or record asking for ⼁ will not match 丨.
Technical and archival: it labels a dictionary-index component rather than carrying a conversational message.
If an index needs ⼁, 丨 is the wrong character even when it looks identical.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1How do you pronounce ⼁?
In Mandarin, radical tables read it gǔn, roughly “goon” with a low, dipping-rising tone. That is the radical’s dictionary name; “vertical line” describes its shape.
More like this
11
How to type or find ⼁
- Also called
- radical 2 · line radical · vertical line radical
- Search it as
- U+2F01 · 2F01 · Kangxi radical 2 · gǔn · gun radical · 丨 · vertical stroke · Shuowen Jiezi
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⼁\2F01Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.