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␘

symbol for cancel

Symbol for Cancel

␘ is the printable picture for CAN, ASCII’s cancel control in an early text-encoding standard. It makes an invisible control readable; the protocol determines its effect.

Text symbol
Search it as
CAN · Ctrl-X · ^X · ASCII CAN · control picture
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ␘ means

It labels CAN, an ASCII control; it does not run it.

ASCII defined CAN as a control character; its first edition dates to 1963. ANSI X3.32 (1973) and ISO 2047 (1975) standardized visible forms for normally nonprinting controls on paper-tape punches and diagnostic displays; Unicode carries the convention in the Control Pictures block.

CAN’s effect depended on the protocol: a 1976 newspaper-transmission standard used it to delete the preceding word; 1987 Videotex text-service control sets used it to stop macros or clear a line.

Technical and archival: it signals control-code inspection, not casual cancellation.

Don't confuse it with

1
^X
Ctrl-X and ␘ have different roles: Ctrl-X names a keystroke; ^X is caret notation for CAN, while ␘ is its printable picture.

Questions people ask

1

Will every font draw ␘ the same way?

No. Unicode’s reference shape is not prescriptive, so the box and diagonal may vary by font.

How to type ␘

Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2418, 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 cancel”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2418, then Enter or Space.
HTML
␘
CSS
\2418
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
␘
HTML hex
␘
CSS content
content: "\2418";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%90%98
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.

Families this belongs to

1

Control pictures55 symbols

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