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In Unicode, there are many characters named like "SQUARE APAATO" which look
like this ㌀ - a number of katakana characters arranged in a square.

The full list is here:
<http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/cjk_compatibility/images.htm>

Why do these characters exist, and how are they used? It feels like some of
them are currency signs (doru, koruna) but I have no idea about the rest.
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2016-08-02T08:49:24.153
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2016-08-02T10:06:00.507
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question
katakana computing
Why does Unicode have code points for MANSYON, APAATO and such?
These are called
[組文字](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B5%84%E6%96%87%E5%AD%97), whose main
purpose is to save space. Certain words such as アパート (="apartment building"),
株式会社 (="co. ltd.") appear in address books so often that publishing firms had
special movable types with tiny fonts for them. Some common combinations were
adopted in the JIS standard, on which Unicode was based.

組文字 might have been relatively common until 40 years ago or so, but recently
this custom has become rarer. You don't usually have to use them yourself. But
you may find some 組文字 for units (㌫, ㌕, etc) still in use in newspapers and
magazines.

One similar example is 分注【ぶんちゅう】 or
[割注【わりちゅう】](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warichu), which is similar in
purpose to "footnotes". You may find 割注 if you buy an old book published in
1960's or so. Recent good DTP software [still support
this](https://helpx.adobe.com/jp/incopy/using/composing-cjk-
characters.html#WSa285fff53dea4f8617383751001ea8cb3f-6e49a).
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2016-08-02T10:06:00.507
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2016-08-02T10:06:00.507
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answer