What ௶ means
A Tamil ledger shorthand for “debit”, built from the letter ப.
Tamil clerks and merchants kept accounts in Tamil script and gave the most frequent ledger words their own short signs: day, month, year, ௶ debit, credit, “as above”, rupee and number. ௶ stands for பற்று (paṟṟu), the debit side of an account, while stands for வரவு (varavu), money received. Unicode encoded the whole set so that traditional records and forms can be typed faithfully.
The shape is a ப with a curling tail. Print forms vary: a 2012 Unicode review compared the chart glyph with the one printed in G. U. Pope’s 1855 Tamil handbook and proposed widening the drawing to match it. Many fonts still lack the sign, so it may appear as an empty box.
A formal bookkeeping abbreviation from Tamil clerical writing, with no casual or emotional meaning.
It marks an account debit, not a minus sign or a subtraction.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
3Is ௶ a minus sign?
No. It labels an entry as a debit in an account; it is a word abbreviation, not a mathematical operator.
Is ௶ just the letter ப?
No. It is derived from ப but is a separate character with its own code point; use ப in ordinary Tamil words.
Why do I see a box instead of the sign?
Your font lacks it. Fonts that cover the full Tamil block, such as many Noto Tamil fonts, draw it.
More like this
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How to type or find ௶
- Also called
- patru sign · paṟṟu · Tamil debit symbol
- Search it as
- பற்று · pattru · tamil accounting symbol · tamil ledger mark · U+0BF6 · debit mark · debit entry · tamil bookkeeping · interlocking u shapes
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
௶\0BF6Why is ௶ a box on my screen?
fsymbols draws rare signs with its own fonts, so they show here even where your device has none. An app or website without such a font shows an empty box (□) or a question mark instead. Turn our fonts off to see each sign as your device draws it by itself: a box here means a box in your chats and documents too.
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.