What ⼀ means
It labels the “one” section in a character index.
In a radical-and-stroke lookup, the radical label tells you which section to open; the remaining strokes narrow the search. ⼀ does not make every character in its section mean “one.”
A Han-era Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen Jiezi, arranged its sections beginning with 一. The 1615 Zihui set out a 214-radical system that the 1716 Kangxi Dictionary adopted.
Use ⼀ only as a radical label
The ordinary Chinese character 一 writes “one”; ⼀ is a separate character used as a radical label. The forms are related, but they are not interchangeable.
A font can make the two marks look almost identical or visibly different. Read their role rather than guessing from the horizontal stroke: ⼀ belongs in a dictionary index or character reference, while 一 belongs in ordinary Chinese writing.
A reference mark for Chinese-character dictionaries and component indexes.
In running Chinese text, ⼀ changes the ordinary “one” character 一 into an index marker.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ⼀ 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.
More like this
11
How to type or find ⼀
- Also called
- radical one · radical 1 · 一部
- Search it as
- U+2F00 · U2F00 · Kangxi radical 1 · 部首
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⼀\2F00Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.