It was introduced in the late 1930s as the Hindu-Arabic digit '1', and on Cyrillic keyboards, it is usually typeset as the Roman numeral 'I'.

In fact, on many Russian typewriters, the character looked not like the digit 1 but like the Roman numeral I with serifs.

[1] In the alphabets of Abaza, Avar, Chechen, Dargwa, Ingush, Lak, Lezgian, Tabassaran, and Tsakhur, it is a modifier letter which signals the preceding consonant as an ejective or pharyngeal consonant;[2] this letter has no phonetic value on its own.

In Chechen, the palochka makes a preceding stop or affricate ejective if voiceless, or pharyngealized if voiced, but also represents the voiced pharyngeal fricative /ʕ/ (like the ayn in Arabic) when it does not follow a stop or affricate.

Exceptionally among the Caucasian languages, Abkhaz does not use the palochka, but instead uses a series of special letters to distinguish ejective and non-ejective (aspirated) consonants.