What 󠅔 means
It selects a documented glyph form for the character before it.
An ideographic variation sequence (IVS) pairs a Han ideograph—a character used in Chinese and Japanese writing, and in some Korean contexts—with a selector. It can preserve an exact written form in a person's name, a place name, historical text, or publishing record without replacing the underlying ideograph.
Variation-selector work was documented by 1997, and an ideographic-selector proposal was updated in 2004. Unicode's Ideographic Variation Database (IVD) records registered pairs and allows separate collections for communities that need different glyph forms.
Use it only in a documented pair
Use VS101 only as part of a complete base-plus-selector sequence specified for that ideograph by a font, data source, or standard. The number is not a variant number: the same selector can have different effects after different base ideographs, and unregistered pairs should not be treated as having a shared meaning for text interchange.
As of 2026-08-03, Unicode's IVD sequence file lists no registered pair using UE0154. This selector therefore has no IVD-defined glyph choice in that file; its effect depends on a documented pair. It cannot turn bold, italics, or a whole span on.
A technical control for documents that must preserve the exact written form of one Han character.
Do not use it alone: without a registered base pair, it selects no defined glyph form.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsIt requests the glyph form registered for that particular ideograph.
Related characters
3
️ Variation Selector-16 can request emoji presentation after supported base characters. It is an emoji-presentation counterpart, while VS101 concerns ideographic glyph variants.
Questions people ask
2Why is variation selector 101 invisible?
It is invisible by design. A variation selector affects the glyph chosen for a preceding character instead of drawing its own mark. When the pair is supported, the visible result is the base character in its selected form.
Can variation selector 101 make text bold?
No. A variation selector chooses a glyph form for one base character; bold and italics are text styling applied to a span.
More like this
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How to type or find 󠅔
- Also called
- VS101
- Search it as
- E0154 · IVS · ideographic variation sequence · Han glyph variant · invisible selector
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
󠅔\E0154Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.