What ⛯ means
It marks a lighthouse, seen from above. Japan's map symbol for a lighthouse uses rays to show light spreading in every direction, as the Geospatial Information Authority explains.
Unicode took it from ARIB STD B24, a Japanese digital-broadcast symbol set. In 2008, Unicode renamed LIGHTHOUSE to MAP SYMBOL FOR LIGHTHOUSE: the radial mark is a map convention, not a lighthouse picture or international nautical-chart sign.
⛯ is a cartographic text symbol, not a lighthouse emoji.
Outside a map, readers may miss its lighthouse meaning.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ⛯ look different across fonts?
It can: ⛯ is a text character, so the active font supplies its glyph and may draw it differently.
How to type ⛯
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 26EF, 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 “map symbol for lighthouse”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 26ef, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⛯CSS
\26EFCodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⛯
HTML hex
⛯
CSS content
content: "\26EF";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%9B%AF
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.