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⸄

left dotted substitution bracket

Left Dotted Substitution Bracket

⸄ opens the second alternative reading in a critical edition of the New Testament; ⸅ closes it. A critical edition compares manuscript copies and marks places where their wording differs, so this is editorial notation rather than an everyday bracket. The pair appears in a 1963 Nestle–Aland Greek New Testament edition.

Text symbol

Search it as: ⸄ meaning · second variant bracket · critical apparatus · New Testament textual criticism · Nestle–Aland · dotted editorial mark · ⸂ · ⸅
Shows up in: Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ⸄ means

It brackets the second alternative reading.

A critical edition compares New Testament manuscripts and records differences in their wording. ⸄ opens the words for the second alternative reading; ⸅ closes that span. In its 2003 encoding proposal, Unicode described these marks as used in Nestle–Aland and related journals.

⸄ vs ⸂: the dots mark a different reading

⸄ is the dotted opener for the second alternative; ⸂ opens the solid pair for the first. Their matching closers are ⸅ and ⸃.

Specialist notation used in New Testament textual criticism.

Replacing it with [ loses the distinction: the dots mark the second alternative.

Don't confuse it with

⸂

Left Substitution Bracket

The undotted opener ⸂ begins the first alternative; ⸄ begins the second.

Combination ideas

The dotted pair encloses the second alternative reading.

Questions people ask

Why 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.

How to type ⸄

Windows (Word)

Alt+XType 2E04, then Alt+X to get ⸄.

Windows

Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).

macOS

Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “left dotted substitution bracket”.

Linux

Ctrl+Shift+UType 2e04, then Enter or Space.

HTML

⸄

CSS

\2E04

Codes and encoding1 code points

HTML decimal

⸄

HTML hex

⸄

CSS content

content: "\2E04";

Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.

URL encoded

%E2%B8%84

On screen

Code points

JS .length

UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

Typography & punctuation332 symbols

‼️❗⁉️❓❔❕〰️!"#%&