What ㏌ means
Read it as inch or inches, not as area.
The frame describes layout, not area: in² means square inches. Unicode gives ㏌ a compatibility decomposition into the letters i and n, so its unit reading is inch.
This is a full-cell Latin abbreviation from East Asian legacy character sets: the short label could occupy one square character cell beside ideographs. Japanese text layout uses compact square frames for its characters, which explains the fit. The same design appears in ㎜ and ㎏, full-cell abbreviations for other units.
How do I type ㏌?
Use a Unicode input method or escape for this exact character.
If your input method supports Unicode code-point entry, enter U+33CC. In source code, use the Unicode escape \u33CC where that language supports it; ordinary in is two letters, not this character.
Normalization can change the character: NFC preserves it, while NFKC and NFKD replace it with ordinary in. Its letter placement and width can vary by font because this is a text symbol, not vendor emoji artwork.
Technical and legacy-looking; use ordinary `in` when you do not need the full-cell form.
The frame does not make it square inches.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
2Why did ㏌ turn into in?
NFKC and NFKD compatibility normalization do that: they replace this character with ordinary `in`. NFC preserves the full-cell form.
Is ㏌ an emoji?
No. It is a text symbol drawn by the active font, not vendor emoji artwork.
How to type ㏌
㏌\33CCCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.