What ▚ means
It is a quadrant fill for diagonal text graphics.
A 2000 Unicode proposal called for block fills in terminal emulators, where fixed text cells stood in for pixel-by-pixel drawing on hardware terminals. Pair ▚ with other fills for shading.
Block-style PC text art was prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s, so this tile can evoke a retro look.
A technical tile for text graphics; it fits layouts better than ordinary prose.
Its proportions come from the font, so a pattern may not align.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsSent alone
A decorative tile that can suggest a retro-computing look.
Inside text art
One piece of a larger shape, border, or shaded area.
Don't confuse it with
4▙▛▜▞
Quadrant Upper Left And Lower Left And Lower Right
shares “lower”, “quadrant”, “upper”
Quadrant Upper Left And Upper Right And Lower Left
shares “lower”, “quadrant”, “upper”
Quadrant Upper Left And Upper Right And Lower Right
shares “lower”, “quadrant”, “upper”
Quadrant Upper Right And Lower Left
shares “lower”, “quadrant”, “upper”
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.
How to type ▚
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 259A, 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 “quadrant upper left and lower right”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 259a, then Enter or Space.
HTML
▚CSS
\259ACodes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
▚
HTML hex
▚
CSS content
content: "\259A";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%96%9A
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.