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󠆵

variation selector-198

Variation Selector-198

Variation Selector-198 invisibly chooses a character's written form. After a matching Chinese or Japanese character, it can request one registered shape. The font must support that exact pair; alone, it looks blank.

Text symbol
Also called
VS198
Search it as
e01b5 · ivs
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What 󠆵 means

It requests a registered written form after a matching character.

The base is the character being varied. Unicode calls it an ideograph: a Han character used in Chinese, Japanese, and other East Asian writing. VS198 follows it in an Ideographic Variation Sequence (IVS).

IVS solve a publishing problem: plain text can preserve a chosen print form. The first Ideographic Variation Database collection, Adobe-Japan1, was registered on 2007-12-14.

Why is variation selector 198 invisible?

Unsupported pairs leave the selector invisible.

If this exact pair is unsupported, the mark is ignored and the base keeps its usual form. Japanese typography also requires the text and font to use the same IVD collection to show the intended form.

Don't confuse it with

4
󠄀
Variation Selector-17
shares “selector”, “variation”
󠄁
Variation Selector-18
shares “selector”, “variation”
󠄂
Variation Selector-19
shares “selector”, “variation”
󠄃
Variation Selector-20
shares “selector”, “variation”

Questions people ask

1

Why does 󠆵 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 󠆵

Windows (Word)
Alt+XType E01B5, then Alt+X to get 󠆵.
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 “variation selector-198”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType e01b5, then Enter or Space.
HTML
󠆵
CSS
\E01B5
How do I use variation selector 198?
Copy it from the palette above, then place it after the base character. The font must support the registered pair.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
󠆵
HTML hex
󠆵
CSS content
content: "\E01B5";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F3%A0%86%B5
1
On screen
1
Code points
2
JS .length
4
UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

1

Accents & marks659 symbols

^`¨¯´¸ʰʱʲʳʴʵ