What ‰ means
It means one part in every thousand. 5‰ equals 0.5%, or five parts per thousand. It is used in measurements where numbers are smaller than typical whole percentages: blood alcohol driving limits in several European countries (such as 0.5‰), ocean water salinity (typically around 35‰), slope grades in rail transport, and the fineness of precious metals.
The glyph mirrors % but adds an extra zero at the bottom to reflect the denominator 1,000. While % evolved from early Italian bookkeeping abbreviations for “per cento”, ‰ was formed directly by analogy to represent thousandths.
Technical, legal, and mathematical; it denotes exact ratio rather than emphasis.
Do not read ‰ as %. The denominator is 1,000, not 100.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
3
Combination ideas
3Questions 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
18
Collections with ‰
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How to type or find ‰
- Also called
- permille · per mil · per thousand
- Search it as
- permil · parts per thousand · promil
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
‰\2030Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.