What ㌱ means
Read it as ビル, the Japanese word for a building. It packs the two katakana characters (from a Japanese writing system) into a square cell, so the shape marks a compact spelling rather than a picture.
It belongs to the legacy Japanese set of squared katakana words, a group of compact forms for terms usually written with multiple characters.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Why does ㌱ 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 ㌱
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 3331, then Alt+X to get ㌱.
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 “square biru”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 3331, then Enter or Space.
HTML
㌱CSS
\3331Character picker
Select SQUARE BIRU in a character picker, or enter U+3331 with a Unicode input method. Typing ビル gives the ordinary two-kana spelling.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
㌱
HTML hex
㌱
CSS content
content: "\3331";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E3%8C%B1
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.