Question is it a character or grammatical symbol?

this " I " looking this, is it a character or grammatical symbol?

https://imgur.com/gallery/mRZZ6PG

thank you

 

It's the manga way of extending letters in a word.
Say "Oh" :
O-h = Oooooh

What it is... I'm not sure what it's called.

 

It's called the Choonpu. And to correct jawz, this is not a "manga way of extending letters" but a common character in katakana. For example, ramen is written ラーメン

 

I think maybe it's just the equivalent of em-dash (—), except vertical?

or not

 

Pepe

 

I still find it interesting that the orientation follows the text

 

mmm, vowel modifier. Something English lacks.

 

That is an interesting question. Japanese has a traditional vertical format called tategaki. I wouldn't be surprised if it was originally vertical, but later rotated for horizontal Japanese to stand out more or something. There's a decent chance a historian with a focus on premodern Japan would know a definite answer, if this interests you.

 

I always thought it has to do with how they used to write with a brush. As you write you never want to change directions or move the brush too much + the characters are usually written in a way, that you end up somewhere below or below and to the right of where you start -> it is natural to just move the brush vertically next if you are writing vertically or from left to right if writing horizontally (especially so in a cursive script).

Not that it stops people from making signs with choonpu written wrongly (and it looks silly, at least to me)

 

arab, is almost the same as cursive yet you write from right to left....