What ␇ means
It labels BEL, a nonprinting request for human attention.
In 1915, Western Union’s teleprinter—a machine that printed messages received over wires—used a “signal” control to ring the operator’s bell. ITA2 and ASCII later carried BEL as an attention control; ␇ is its printable label.
In terminal input, Ctrl+G sends BEL rather than ␇. Ghostty’s documentation, as of 2026, lists configurable responses: sound, visual flash, notification or silence.
Technical and archival; it reads as code.
␇ itself will not sound the terminal bell.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Can ␇ vary between fonts?
Yes. Fonts may draw it differently; it still marks BEL.
How to type ␇
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2407, 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 “symbol for bell”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2407, then Enter or Space.
HTML
␇CSS
\2407Unicode entry
Select U+2407 in an editor’s Unicode insertion tool; shortcuts vary by system.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
␇
HTML hex
␇
CSS content
content: "\2407";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%90%87
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.