What ㎡ means
It means square metres, the same area unit as m².
The compact form comes from Japanese character-set encoding: the Latin letter m and raised 2 fit one East Asian character cell. That changes the layout footprint, not the measurement.
In Japanese property listings, ㎡ can label floor area. Technical documents may instead use m² or m2; the notation changes, but the area unit stays the same.
Compact technical area notation; in Japanese property listings it can label floor area.
Don't confuse it with
3m²
Same area unit, written with the Latin m and superscript 2 as two characters.
m2
㎢Same area unit in plain text, with the 2 on the baseline.
Square Km Squared
Square kilometres, not square metres; the k changes the unit.
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.
How to type ㎡
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 33A1, then Alt+X to get ㎡.
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 m squared”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 33a1, then Enter or Space.
HTML
㎡CSS
\33A1Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
㎡
HTML hex
㎡
CSS content
content: "\33A1";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E3%8E%A1
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.