What ㎳ means
Use an HTML reference or a supported Unicode escape. In HTML, write ㎳; in source code, write \u33B3 where Unicode escapes are supported.
What does ㎳ mean?
It stands for milliseconds in a square, full-width cell. It represents ms, the abbreviation for milliseconds, fitted into a one-character-wide square cell. That width lets Latin unit labels line up with East Asian text; the square changes the layout, not the unit.
This family of square Latin unit abbreviations came from legacy Japanese and Korean character-set standards, where short labels could occupy the same full-width cell as East Asian characters. Unicode kept the forms for compatibility and data interchange. The reading remains ms; the square preserves that older layout convention.
The same pattern appears in ㎰ for ps (picoseconds), ㎱ for ns (nanoseconds), and ㎲ for μs (microseconds).
Technical; ㎳ suggests text shaped for fixed East Asian cells or legacy data.
The square is layout, not a second unit.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ㎳ turn into `ms`?
NFKC and NFKD produce `ms`; NFC and NFD retain ㎳. Compatibility normalization supports matching equivalent text, but it does not preserve the square cell.
How to type ㎳
㎳\33B3Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.