What ⎷ means
No: √ is the complete sign; ⎷ is one piece. Separate cells form its upright and top bar.
Print showed the radical sign without its top bar in 1525. René Descartes added it in 1637; the bar is called a vinculum. Those dates trace root notation, not ⎷.
Why did terminals need it?
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) included it in the DEC Technical Character Set for terminals. Aligned cells let it join strokes into tall radicals.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why is ⎷ a box?
No available font draws ⎷, so the app shows a missing-glyph box.
How to type ⎷
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 23B7, 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 “radical symbol bottom”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 23b7, then Enter or Space.
HTML
⎷CSS
\23B7Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
⎷
HTML hex
⎷
CSS content
content: "\23B7";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%8E%B7
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.