What ⌑ means
Its job depended on the application.
The IBM 407 was an accounting machine; its 1953 manual is early evidence of ⌑. Users assigned print characters local jobs. A lozenge has four inward-curving sides.
By the 1960s, some banking installations used ⌑ as a subtotal mark for second-level totals. IBM records distinguish it from asterisks used for other totals-related work.
Why can ⌑ look different?
The font draws its outline.
Fonts can change ⌑'s proportions or spacing, or omit the glyph. The outline may vary, but the character stays the same.
Outside a documented system, ⌑ has no shared social reading; surrounding text supplies the context.
Treat “subtotal” as a local accounting convention, not an inherent meaning.
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ⌑ 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
10
Collections with ⌑
2
How to type or find ⌑
- Also called
- pillow · sucked-in box · total symbol
- Search it as
- IBM lozenge · subtotal mark
- 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.