What ༩ means
It stands for nine.
The Tibetan word for nine is དགུ. For example, ༩༠ is 90 and ༩༠༠ is 900: moving the same digit one place left makes it ten times larger.
The Tibetan writing system developed from the older Brahmi script. Traditional accounts link its development to Thonmi Sambhota in the mid-seventh century; a 9th-century Tibetan manuscript from Dunhuang shows the script in use.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ༩ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ༩
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 0F29, then Alt+X to get ༩.
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 “tibetan digit nine”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 0f29, then Enter or Space.
HTML
༩CSS
\0F29Tibetan keyboard
Unicode CLDR keyboard chart 40 maps the 9 key to ༩ in TibetanOtaniUS and Tibetan (PRC); layouts differ.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
༩
HTML hex
༩
CSS content
content: "\0F29";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E0%BC%A9
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.