a character for an unknown character

[Karl Williamson]

On 12/21/2016 08:45 AM, David Corbett wrote:
> One Unicode character specifically for this purpose is U+3013 GETA MARK.
> It is a Japanese symbol used to replace characters that cannot be read
> during transcription of manuscripts (source: Japanese Wikipedia). It
> looks like a bold equals sign: 〓.
>
> Other people have suggested U+FFFD REPLACEMENT CHARACTER, but that is
> the diamond with a question mark inside it that you already mentioned.

And the RREPLACEMENT CHARACTER is what is used if there is a malformed 
character, such as could occur in transmission.  Thus, its use is 
ambiguous to you.  The reader would not know if the original manuscript 
was illegible here, or if somewhere along the way something happened to 
foul up the text.