What ࠖ means
A voiced consonant formed deep in the throat.
Samaritan writing developed from the old linear Hebrew script, probably directly from the Phoenician alphabet. The need for this mark arose no earlier than the 13th century, when older throat sounds from ayin or ḥet weakened but still needed to be pronounced. Samaritan scribes adapted Arabic ʿayn as a diacritic, though Arabic used it for a different sound.
Why can the mark float?
It needs a base consonant to attach to.
When attached, it belongs above and to the right of its base letter. Without compatible Samaritan font support, it can shift; alone, it may appear with a dotted circle showing where it attaches.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions 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 ࠖ
ࠖ\0816Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.