What ▐ means
On text terminals, fixed-width character cells let block graphics draw borders and solid areas. Unicode's block set includes forms from IBM PC Code Page 437 (CP437), China's GB 2312, Korea's KS X 1001, and other terminal sets. Repeat ▐ for a bar or pixel pattern.
Technical and retro-looking; it reads as text-mode construction.
CP437 byte DE is an encoding value; treating it as Unicode ▐ can produce another character.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsAlone in a drawing
A vertical fill at the cell's right edge.
Beside ▌
Together they fill one cell when aligned.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions 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 2590, 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 “right half block”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2590, then Enter or Space.
HTML
▐CSS
\2590Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
▐
HTML hex
▐
CSS content
content: "\2590";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%96%90
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.