What 🈘 means
It takes 交 from 交通, the Japanese word for traffic.
On its own, 交 means to cross, mix or exchange; it appears in words such as 交通 (traffic), 交差点 (intersection) and 外交 (diplomacy). Japanese broadcasters tag programme listings with one-character boxed labels: 🈘 marks a traffic-information slot, just as (解, commentary) or (字, closed captions) mark other features. The set comes from ARIB, the Japanese broadcast standards body, and was proposed to Unicode in 2007 as “Japanese TV Symbols”.
Its home is Japanese broadcasting. Unlike or , it never became an emoji, so phones show it as plain text, and devices without a font for it show an empty box or similar placeholder.
A neutral label from Japanese TV listings; it has no established emotional or slang meaning.
Part of the collection
Related characters
1
Combination ideas
4Questions people ask
2Can 🈘 tell me if a road is closed?
No. It only says “traffic information here”; the symbol names no road, incident or current conditions.
Is 🈘 Chinese or Japanese?
Both share the character 交 (Chinese jiāo, Japanese kō, Korean 교), but the boxed symbol comes from Japanese broadcasting.
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ᄀHangul Choseong Kiyeok
ᄁHangul Choseong Ssangkiyeok
ᄂHangul Choseong Nieun
ᄃHangul Choseong Tikeut
ᄄHangul Choseong SsangtikeutHow to type or find 🈘
- Search it as
- 交 · boxed 交 · square kanji · traffic · traffic information · Japanese TV symbol · 1F218
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
🈘\1F218Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.