What 〱 means
In vertical Japanese, it repeats a multi-character run.
The Japanese name くの字点 means “ku-shaped mark”; the outline resembles the hiragana character く. It is the unvoiced form; 〲 is its voiced counterpart. Voicing means the vocal cords vibrate during a consonant; 〲 marks a voiced version of the repeated run.
The earliest identifiable examples are kana messages in Japanese documents from around 964–968. Kana are Japanese syllabic signs. The mark saved the work of writing repeated text; later documents also place it after kanji, Japanese characters used to write words, in some repeated words.
Why does 〱 look wrong horizontally?
It is designed for vertical Japanese composition.
The full mark takes two character spaces vertically; 〳 and 〵 are one-space halves intended to join into it. Without vertical layout or suitable font support, the mark may look cramped or misplaced, and the halves can appear as separate slashes.
How do I type 〱?
A character palette is the most dependable route.
Search your editor’s character palette for くの字点. Ordinary kana-to-text conversion may not offer it, and the font must contain the glyph. Use a vertical text frame when the layout matters.
It points to vertical Japanese, older text, or deliberate period styling; it feels out of place in ordinary chat.
In horizontal text, it can resemble a malformed く; write the repeated characters out when clarity matters.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does 〱 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 〱
〱\3031Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.