What 🈓 means
The programme has a data service you can call up on screen. In Japanese programme guides, a small square デ next to a title means the broadcast carries data broadcasting (データ放送): a second layer of text and graphics sent with the show. As of 2026, NTV's guide, for example, marks such programmes with [デ].
Data broadcasting is the thing behind the symbol. On a Japanese digital TV you press the remote's d button (dボタン) and, on many sets, the picture shrinks to make room for a panel: news and weather, or, when the service is linked to the programme itself, things like extra show information, quizzes and games, or a prize draw you enter from the sofa. 🈓 flags that linked, programme-specific kind.
It belongs to a small family of square marks from the Japanese digital-TV standard that Unicode encoded together in 2009: for closed captions, for sign language, for two-way (viewer-response) programmes and for bilingual sound.
Will it show on my screen, and how do I type it?
Not always. 🈓 is an ordinary text character, not an emoji, so it depends on your font and app: some phones and browsers draw a blank box or nothing at all, while fonts built for Japanese and Chinese text, such as Noto Sans CJK, show デ in a square. There is no keyboard key for it and Japanese input usually won't offer it, so people paste it or enter the code point.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
4
Related characters
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Combination ideas
3Worth knowing
- The symbol set comes from ARIB STD-B24, the Japanese digital-TV standard first issued in 1999, where these marks served mainly in closed captions long before Unicode had them.
- When Unicode encoded the mark in 2009 it was first proposed at U32FF, then moved into the block with its sibling broadcast marks.
Questions people ask
2Is 🈓 an emoji?
No. It is a plain text symbol with no emoji version, so it usually isn't on emoji keyboards and renders only when a font includes it.
Does 🈓 mean anything outside Japan?
Not as a broadcast mark. It is a Japanese television convention; elsewhere it turns up mainly when people quote or discuss Japanese listings.
More like this
9
Collections with 🈓
1
How to type or find 🈓
- Also called
- boxed de · de in a square · data broadcasting mark
- Search it as
- data broadcasting · Japanese TV symbol · d button · デ · program guide symbol · 1F213
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
🈓\1F213Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.