What ㌎ means
It is a one-cell form of the Japanese unit word ガロン.
Japanese dictionaries record the loanword in 1860 and 1877. ガロン is written in Katakana, a Japanese syllabic script; older unit typography fitted multi-character unit names into one square cell for tables and fixed grids.
Why does ㌎ become ガロン? NFKC and NFKD are compatibility-normalization forms that expand it to ordinary ガロン, dropping the square frame. It names a gallon without specifying its size: Japanese measurement guidance uses the US liquid gallon as of 2026; US and British gallons differ.
A legacy-style unit sign; ordinary Japanese text spells the unit ガロン.
The square is typographic: ㌎ is not gallons squared.
Questions people ask
1Why does ㌎ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the CJK Compatibility block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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How to type or find ㌎
- Search it as
- gallon · gal · ガロン · square gallon
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.