What means
It was an optional set for building oversized letters. The HP 2640 large character set lived in an extra ROM, a chip storing additional letter shapes. Each large letter was assembled from up to nine pieces in three rows. An HP Journal feature in 1976 shows these large characters in use on a terminal.
These pieces can also form plain-text lettering when a compatible font gives every character the same width. A 2024 Cascadia Code issue documented one layout trap: extra line spacing in Visual Studio can leave gaps between rows that should join.
Part of the collection
Questions people ask
1Why does 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
10
╲Box Drawings Light Diagonal Upper Left To Lower RightLarge Type Piece Diagonal Lower RightLarge Type Piece Stem With Right CrossbarLarge Type Piece StemLarge Type Piece Diagonal Upper Right
␀Symbol For Null
␁Symbol For Start Of Heading
␂Symbol For Start Of Text
␃Symbol For End Of Text
␄Symbol For End Of TransmissionHow to type or find
- Search it as
- large type · large text · hp terminal · hp 2640 · headline · text art
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𜸪\1CE2ACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.