What ﹐ means
It is a typographic variant of the comma for encoding and layout.
Unicode groups it with compatibility variants for CNS 11643, Taiwan's national standard for exchanging Chinese text. Big5, a two-byte encoding used for Chinese text, maps code A14D to ﹐ in 1985. CNS 11643 became a national standard in 1986. These records tie the small form to text interchange and typography, not a separate punctuation meaning. Unicode also links it to ︐, the vertical comma presentation form.
Small comma vs normal comma: which should I use?
Use it for exact source text or when typesetting calls for it.
For ordinary new writing, use the comma your language and layout convention call for. Some software standardizes text through normalization: its NFKC and NFKD forms turn ﹐ into ,, while NFC and NFD preserve it. Use compatibility normalization only when losing the small form is acceptable.
How do I type U+FE50?
Use Unicode input or an explicit character escape.
The comma key inserts ,, not ﹐. In HTML, write ﹐ or ﹐; in source code, use \uFE50 in a Unicode string literal where supported.
Technical and neutral; it marks an encoding or typesetting distinction.
NFKC or NFKD can turn ﹐ into `,`, erasing the small form.
Don't confuse it with
3Worth knowing
- Unicode line-breaking rules treat ﹐ as closing punctuation, so a compliant line break does not place it at the start of a line.
Questions people ask
2Can NFKC normalize the small comma?
Yes. NFKC and NFKD map ﹐ to `,`; NFC and NFD preserve it. Compatibility normalization loses the small form.
Why can the small comma look different in vertical text?
Fonts and layout engines differ. Vertical layout may transform the glyph or leave it upright, and a font need not include every form.
How to type ﹐
﹐\FE50Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.