What ⦀ means
It fences a formula, the way brackets do. ⦀ sits in the Unicode set of extra mathematical brackets, and maths software treats it as a fence that stretches to the height of whatever it encloses. The same character serves as the opening and the closing side.
Its main job is the triple norm. A norm measures how big something is: x is the size of a number, ‖x‖ the length of a vector or the norm of a matrix. When a text needs a second, special norm alongside the ordinary one (for example a norm on operators, or an energy norm in numerical analysis), authors often write it with three bars: ⦀x⦀.
Three single pipes typed in a row look similar but are three separate characters that will not stretch or stay together. In plain chat, ⦀ carries no agreed meaning; people who use it there are usually after its look, as a divider or a bit of geometric decoration.
Neutral technical notation; outside maths it is just a shape.
Part of collections
Don't confuse it with
3
Questions people ask
2Is ⦀ the same as typing three characters?
No. ⦀ is one character that maths software can stretch and keep together; is three separate pipes that may space apart or break across lines.
Is ⦀ a click sound in phonetics?
Only rarely. Standard click letters are separate characters such as ǀ, ǁ, ǂ and ǃ. A few phonetic proposals have used three bars for an unusual click, but that is not established practice.
More like this
10
How to type or find ⦀
- Also called
- triple bar · triple pipe · triple norm bars
- Search it as
- three vertical lines · triple vertical bar · triple norm · |||
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
⦀\2980Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.