What ⹗ means
The bracketed material is meant to be left out.
Here, “ellipsis” means omission; “obligatory” means the grammar requires it.
Linguist Samuel E. Martin used this pair in his 2004 reference book on Japanese grammar.
Don't confuse it with
2⹕…⹖ ⹗ vs ⹕…⹖: the single-stroke pair marks optional omission; the double-stroke pair marks required omission.
[ … ] Ordinary square brackets do not say whether the enclosed text must be omitted.
Questions people ask
1Why does ⹗ show as a box?
A font or app may lack a glyph for ⹗. The box is a fallback display, not a change to the character.
More like this
9
How to type or find ⹗
- Search it as
- ⹗ · U+2E57 · obligatory ellipsis · required omission bracket · double-stroke bracket · Japanese grammar punctuation · ⹕ ⹖ optional omission
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
Windows
macOS
HTML
⹗CSS
\2E57Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⹗
HTML hex
⹗
CSS content
content: "\2E57";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%B9%97
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.