What 󠄽 means
It modifies the character before it, and only in a registered sequence.
A variation sequence is a base character plus the selector, in that order. The base keeps its identity; VS78 carries no meaning of its own, never spells a sound, adds an accent, or makes an emoji.
Why does UE013D look blank?
Because it has no glyph of its own.
It is a nonspacing mark that Unicode treats as default-ignorable: when no supported sequence applies, the renderer keeps the base's glyph and leaves the selector invisible. A diagnostic “show invisibles” mode can still expose it.
Why was this selector range created?
To keep exact glyph forms without encoding new characters.
The earliest proposal is dated 1997-12-01; the design was refined across 2001–2004. The need was practical: names, government records and publishing sometimes require one specific shape of an East Asian character while keeping the underlying character searchable.
Scholars, standards bodies and publishers need different historical or regional forms, so Unicode registers them in separate collections; the Ideographic Variation Database is the East Asian one.
Technical and invisible: it matters only when preserving a specific ideographic glyph form.
Do not read it as a message; alone, it selects nothing.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2️ VS16 (U+FE0F) is the emoji selector; it is not interchangeable with VS78.
Zero-width space (U+200B) is the invisible mark for blank text; VS78 alone selects nothing.
Related characters
3
Questions people ask
2Can I define my own VS78 sequence?
No. A sequence counts only when Unicode sanctions it through a standardized, emoji or ideographic registry; arbitrary pairs are ignored.
Why does VS78 show as a box?
It was never meant to print. Default-ignorable selectors stay invisible; a box means the app is exposing unsupported text, not applying a sequence.
More like this
8
How to type or find 󠄽
- Also called
- VS78
- Search it as
- e013d · vs 78 · invisible character · ideographic variation selector · ivs
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
󠄽\E013DCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.