U+205B "⁛" Four Dot Mark Unicode Character

U+205B "⁛" Four Dot Mark is a punctuation symbol used primarily in historical and liturgical texts, most notably in medieval manuscripts and early printed works, to indicate a pause or a break in the text that is stronger than a comma but weaker than a period. It consists of four dots arranged in a diamond or square pattern and functions as a type of interpunct or metrical marker, often appearing in Greek and Latin poetry or in biblical annotations to denote a major division or a longer breath stop within a sentence. In modern digital typography, it is preserved as a specialized character within the Unicode standard’s General Punctuation block, serving scholarly and editorial contexts rather than common writing.

General Properties

Code Point	U+205B
Version Added	4.1
Name	Four Dot Mark
Block	General Punctuation
General Category	Other Punctuation
Canonical Combining Class	Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class	Other Neutral

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding	⁛
HTML Hex Encoding	⁛
UTF-8 Encoding	0xE2 0x81 0x9B
UTF-16 Encoding	0x205B
UTF-32 Encoding	0x0000205B
C/C++/Java Escape	\u205b

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check	Yes
NFD Quick Check	Yes
NFKC Quick Check	Yes
NFKD Quick Check	Yes
Numeric Type	None
Numeric Value	NaN
Line Break	Break After
Script	Common
Script Extensions	Common
Indic Syllabic Category	Other
Pattern Syntax	Yes
Vertical Orientation	Rotated
Grapheme Base	Yes
Grapheme Cluster Break	Other
Word Break	Other
Sentence Break	Other