Shape Black Vertical Rectangle
About this character
The character ▮ is known as Shape Black Vertical Rectangle and carries the Unicode code point U+25AE, which is 9646 in decimal. It belongs to the Geometric Shapes block (U+25A0–U+25FF), which gathers squares, circles, triangles and diamonds used as bullets, markers or diagram elements.
In memory, ▮ takes 3 bytes in UTF-8 (0xE2 0x96 0xAE) and 1 in UTF-16 (0x25AE). That difference is why badly configured forms or databases garble this character: they assume one byte per character.
How to type ▮
| System | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows | In Word or WordPad, type 25AE and press Alt + X to turn the code into the character. |
| macOS | On a Mac, open the Character Viewer with Ctrl + ⌘ + Space and search for “Shape Black Vertical Rectangle”. |
| Linux | On Linux (GTK), type Ctrl + ⇧ + U, 25AE then press Enter. |
| HTML / Web | In an HTML page, write ▮. Use \25AE in CSS, \u25AE in JavaScript and \u25AE in Python. |
| On this site | The simplest route is the Copy button above: the character goes straight to your clipboard, ready to paste anywhere. |
Keyboards that include ▮
This character is not on any common physical layout, so the Copy button above is the quickest way to get it into a document.
Codes and encodings
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Code point | U+25AE |
| Unicode block | Geometric Shapes (U+25A0–U+25FF) |
| Decimal | 9646 |
| Hexadecimal | 0x25AE |
| Octal | 022656 |
| Binary | 10010110101110 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 0xE2 0x96 0xAE |
| UTF-16 units | 0x25AE |
| Named HTML entity | None |
| Decimal HTML entity | ▮ |
| Hex HTML entity | ▮ |
| CSS escape | \25AE |
| JavaScript escape | \u25AE |
| Python escape | \u25AE |
| URL encoding | %E2%96%AE |
Frequently asked questions
What is the Unicode code for ▮?
Its code point is U+25AE, which is 9646 in decimal and 022656 in octal. In HTML you can write it as ▮ or ▮.
Why does ▮ show up as a box or a question mark?
An empty box means the font has no glyph for U+25AE. The character is still in the text: switching to a font that covers the block (Noto, DejaVu or Segoe UI Symbol) makes it appear.
Can I use ▮ in a filename, a URL or a password?
In a URL it must be encoded as %E2%96%AE. Modern filesystems accept it, though it is still risky when moving files between systems. For passwords, some forms reject non-ASCII characters outright.