What ㌒ means
It writes キュリー, the Japanese word for curie, in one cell.
These squared Katakana forms were designed to fit beside kanji in one character cell. The tradition drew on company registries and appeared in Japanese character-set standards such as JIS X 0208 and JIS X 0213.
As of 2026, the curie (Ci) is a legacy unit; the becquerel is the standard unit for radioactivity.
Why can ㌒ look different in vertical text?
Vertical Japanese text can arrange the packed kana differently.
When software applies compatibility normalization (a text cleanup for matching), NFKC/NFKD expand ㌒ to キュリー, while NFC/NFD keep the boxed character. Exact character searches can therefore behave differently after normalization.
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ㌒ 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.
More like this
9
How to type or find ㌒
- Search it as
- curie · curie symbol · キュリー · kyurii · Ci · ㌒
- 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.