What 𐑳 means
It marks Shavian’s stressed STRUT vowel.
In phonetics, the study of speech sounds, this is called the STRUT vowel; English “up,” “cup,” and “but” use it. Shavian contrasts it with 𐑩 (“ado”), the reduced, unstressed vowel at the start of that English word. Some English accents bring the two sounds close.
Where did this Shavian letter come from?
It belongs to an alphabet made for English spelling reform.
Bernard Shaw’s will backed a purpose-built alphabet so English sounds would not need letter groups or extra marks; the aim was easier writing and printing. Competition entries in 1958 led to Shavian’s final design, printed in a bilingual 1962 edition of Shaw’s play Androcles and the Lion.
As of 2026, Shavian remains a specialist alphabet rather than everyday English spelling; online lessons, transliteration tools, fonts, and keyboards support its use. Kingsley Read designed Quikscript for faster writing after working with Shavian, making it a later related script, not the source of this letter.
Inside a Shavian word, it is ordinary spelling; used alone, it signals interest in the script or English spelling reform.
“Up” names the example sound; it does not point upward.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𐑳
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Don't confuse it with
1
Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does 𐑳 appear as a box?
A font without Shavian coverage is the likely cause. The text remains encoded; the app needs a font that can draw Shavian letters.
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How to type or find 𐑳
- Also called
- up · strut
- Search it as
- Shavian Up · Shavian alphabet · Shavian vowel · up vowel · STRUT vowel · Shavian keyboard
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𐑳\10473Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.