What 󠅐 means
It is a context marker, not a readable symbol.
The selector has no standalone reading. In a registered ideographic variation sequence, a Han character—a Chinese-derived character used in East Asian writing—comes first, and this selector can preserve a specific glyph subset in plain text. The selector number alone does not identify a shape: the base character and registered collection do.
This is a Unicode mechanism, not a manuscript sign. An early Unicode design record dated 2000-08-15 already described selectors as invisible and base-dependent; this character was encoded in Unicode 4.0 (2003). The underlying glyph differences come from older CJK type traditions.
How do I type Variation Selector-97?
Use the palette or a Unicode-aware input tool.
For the exact character, use the palette above. In a Unicode-aware editor, insert UE0150; the result may still look blank because the selector is nonspacing and invisible.
Use it after a documented base only. If the app or font does not support that sequence, it normally leaves the base glyph unchanged and hides the selector.
Technical and invisible: CJK typesetting may use it to preserve a precise glyph, but ordinary chat readers see nothing.
Do not send it alone expecting a visible symbol, emoji, or secret message.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsRequests that base's registered glyph variant, if supported.
Don't confuse it with
2︎ VS15 requests text presentation in defined sequences; VS97 is a supplementary selector for ideographic variants.
️ VS16 requests emoji presentation in defined sequences; VS97 does not turn a character into emoji.
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why 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.
More like this
8
How to type or find 󠅐
- Also called
- VS97
- Search it as
- invisible unicode · invisible character · cjk variant · ideographic variant · glyph variant · japanese glyph · han variant
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
󠅐\E0150Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.