What ␋ means
Enter U+240B with Unicode hex input.
This character is a graphic picture of the ASCII VT control. Fonts may draw its shape differently because the reference drawing is not prescriptive.
In Python and C string literals, \v represents the underlying vertical-tab control (U+000B), not this visible picture.
What did vertical tab do on printers?
It moved paper to the next preset line stop.
Vertical tab belonged to ASCII’s printer-format controls: it jumped to a configured vertical stop instead of advancing one line at a time. A 1974 network standard for online documents set conventional stops at lines 1, 9, and 17, then every eighth line; it warned that the convention was hard to enforce in document files.
␋ is the visible picture used to name that underlying control.
Technical and archival; in prose, ␋ is a visible label for a control value.
Do not mistake `\v` or the invisible VT for the visible ␋.
Don't confuse it with
3Questions people ask
1Does ␋ create a line break?
No. The picture only identifies the control; an actual VT targets a configured vertical stop, not the ordinary end-of-line convention.
How to type ␋
␋\240BCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.