What ▢ means
Its context tells you what it marks. The outline gives you a shape, not the sender’s intention; nearby wording or layout supplies that.
Why does ▢ appear in keyboard notation?
The proposal points to ▢ as a keyboard mark’s outline. ISO/IEC 9995-7 is a standard for keyboard symbols. A Unicode proposal dated 2012-09-03 describes a proposed combining enclosure—a sign drawn around a nearby letter—to show the keyboard group selected by that letter. It points to ▢ as the enclosure’s outline.
Don't confuse it with
4Questions people ask
1Is ▢ an emoji?
No. It is a text character drawn by the active font; its rounded outline is the character’s shape.
How to type ▢
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 25A2, 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 “white square with rounded corners”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 25a2, then Enter or Space.
HTML
▢CSS
\25A2Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
▢
HTML hex
▢
CSS content
content: "\25A2";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%96%A2
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.