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󠇪

variation selector-251

Variation Selector 251

On its own, VS251—an invisible variation selector—has no meaning; after a Han character (one used in Chinese, Japanese, and some Korean writing), it can specify that character’s drawn form in an Ideographic Variation Sequence (IVS). The exact character-selector pair carries the choice, so “251” does not name a universal shape or region.

Text symbol
Also called
VS251
Search it as
ivs · cjk · kanji · han · glyph · invisible
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What 󠇪 means

It narrows the glyph choice only as part of a registered pair.

The system addresses a typography need: plain text can preserve a chosen form without relying on a font choice or rich formatting. Unicode’s Ideographic Variation Database (IVD) records specific Han-character-plus-selector pairs; its first collection, Adobe-Japan1, was registered on 2007-12-14.

If the exact pair is not registered or the app does not support it, the base character displays in its usual form and the selector stays invisible.

Don't confuse it with

4
󠄢
Variation Selector-51
shares “selector”, “variation”
󠄣
Variation Selector-52
shares “selector”, “variation”
󠄤
Variation Selector-53
shares “selector”, “variation”
󠄥
Variation Selector-54
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 E01EA, 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-251”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType e01ea, then Enter or Space.
HTML
󠇪
CSS
\E01EA
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
󠇪
HTML hex
󠇪
CSS content
content: "\E01EA";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F3%A0%87%AA
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

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