What 󠅅 means
It requests a defined glyph form for the preceding character.
VS86 has no standalone meaning. A registered Ideographic Variation Sequence (IVS) pairs it with a Han character, the shared character type used in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text, to request one defined glyph form.
These pairs preserve a particular form in plain text when regional, historical, governmental, or publishing needs call for it. The selector number alone does not name a shape; the registered pair does.
Why is Variation Selector-86 invisible?
It has no visible shape by itself.
Unicode treats selectors as default-ignorable: if the exact sequence is unregistered or an app lacks support, the selector stays invisible and the base character appears in its usual form.
Unicode encoded this selector mechanism in 2003 for cases where plain text needs to preserve a glyph choice. That date marks the computer encoding, not the origins of the ideographs or their variant forms.
Technical and invisible: it marks a deliberate glyph choice within a registered sequence.
Alone, VS86 cannot show a glyph.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsRequests the glyph form registered for that exact base-plus-selector pair.
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Can Variation Selector-86 make text bold?
No. It selects a defined glyph form for a specific base character; bold and italic styles apply across text and are handled separately.
More like this
8
How to type or find 󠅅
- Also called
- VS86
- Search it as
- variation selector 86 · U+E0145 · IVS · ideographic variation sequence · CJK variation selector · invisible character · glyph variant
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
󠅅\E0145Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.