computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, a Unicode symbol is a

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

character which is not part of a script used to write a natural language, but is nonetheless available for use as part of a text. Many of the symbols are drawn from existing character sets or

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

/ IEC or other national and international standards. The Unicode Standard states that "The universe of symbols is rich and open-ended," but that in order to be considered, a symbol must have a "demonstrated need or strong desire to exchange in plain text." This makes the issue of what symbols to encode and how symbols should be encoded more complicated than the issues surrounding writing systems. Unicode focuses on symbols that make sense in a one-dimensional plain-text context. For example, the typical two-dimensional arrangement of electronic diagram symbols justifies their exclusion. (Legacy characters such as

box-drawing character Box-drawing characters, also known as line-drawing characters, are a form of semigraphics widely used in text user interfaces to draw various geometric frames and boxes. These characters are characterized by being designed to be connected horiz ...

s, Symbols for Legacy Computing and the Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement, are an exception, since these symbols largely exist for

backward compatibility In telecommunications and computing, backward compatibility (or backwards compatibility) is a property of an operating system, software, real-world product, or technology that allows for interoperability with an older legacy system, or with Input ...

with past encoding systems; a number of electronic diagram symbols are indeed encoded in Unicode's

Miscellaneous Technical Miscellaneous Technical is a Unicode block ranging from U+2300 to U+23FF. It contains various common symbols which are related to and used in the various technical, programming language, and academic professions. For example: * Symbol ⌂ (HTML ...

block.) For adequate treatment in plain text, symbols must also be displayable in a

monochromatic A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or palette is composed of one color (or values of one color). Images using only shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or black-and-white (typically analog). In physics, mon ...

setting. Even with these limitations monochromatic, one-dimensional and standards-based the domain of potential Unicode symbols is extensive. (However,

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis; , ) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from type ...

ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'idea' + 'to write') is a symbol that is used within a given writing system to represent an idea or concept in a given language. (Ideograms are contrasted with phonogram (linguistics), phono ...

graphic Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of the data, as in design and manufa ...

symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

s that were admitted into Unicode, allow colors although the colors are not standardized.)

Symbol block list

There are , including the following symbol blocks: * Alphanumeric variants (based on

Latin characters in Unicode Over a thousand characters from the Latin script are encoded in the Unicode Standard, grouped in several basic and extended Latin blocks. The extended ranges contain mainly precomposed letters plus diacritics that are equivalently encoded with ...

) ** Currency Symbols (U+20A0–U+20CF) ** General Punctuation (U+2000–U+206F) ** Letterlike Symbols (U+2100–U+214F) ** Number Forms (U+2150–U+218F) ** Phonetic symbols (including IPA) (various blocks) **

Superscripts and Subscripts Superscripts and Subscripts is a Unicode block containing superscript and subscript numerals, mathematical operators, and letters used in mathematics and phonetics. The use of subscripts and superscripts in Unicode allows any polynomial, chemic ...

(U+2070–U+209F) * Enclosed variants ** Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement (U+1F100–U+1F1FF) **

Enclosed Alphanumerics Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of Typography, typographical symbols of an alphanumeric within a circle, a bracket or other not-closed enclosure, or ending in a full stop. It is currently fully allocated. Within the Basic Multi ...

(U+2460–U+24FF) ** Enclosed Ideographic Supplement (U+1F200–U+1F2FF) * Arrows ** Arrows (U+2190–U+21FF) ** Dingbats arrows (U+2794–U+27BF) ** Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (U+2B00–U+2BFF) ** Supplemental Arrows-A (U+27F0–U+27FF) ** Supplemental Arrows-B (U+2900–U+297F) ** Supplemental Arrows-C (U+1F800-U+1F8FF) * Mathematical **

Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is a Unicode block comprising styled forms of Latin alphabet, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek letters and decimal numerical digit, digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different l ...

(U+1D400–U+1D7FF) ** Mathematical Operators (U+2200–U+22FF) ** Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A (U+27C0–U+27EF) **

Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B is a Unicode block containing miscellaneous mathematical symbols, including brackets, angles, and circle symbols. Block Some of these symbols are used in Z notation. Specifically * * * * * * The last two ...

(U+2980–U+29FF) ** Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A (U+1FA70–U+1FAFF) **

Supplemental Mathematical Operators Supplemental Mathematical Operators is a Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and d ...

(U+2A00–U+2AFF) * Technical ** Control Pictures (U+2400–U+243F) **

(U+2300–U+23FF) **

Optical Character Recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronics, electronic or machine, mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo ...

(U+2440–U+245F) * Musical ** Znamenny Musical Notation (U+1CF00–1CFCF) ** Ancient Greek Musical Notation (U+1D200–U+1D24F) ** Byzantine Musical Symbols (U+1D000–U+1D0FF) ** Musical Symbols (U+1D100–U+1D1FF) * Games **

Chess Symbols Chess Symbols is a Unicode block containing characters for fairy chess and related notations beyond the basic Western chess symbols (U+2654 to U+265F) in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, as well as symbols representing game pieces for xiangqi ...

(U+1FA00–1FA6F) ** Domino Tiles (U+1F030–U+1F09F) ** Mahjong Tiles (U+1F000–U+1F02F) ** Playing Cards (U+1F0A0–U+1F0FF) * Emoji and emoticons **

Dingbat In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames (similar to box-drawing characters), or a ...

(U+2700–U+27BF) ** Emoticons (U+1F600–U+1F64F) ** Miscellaneous Symbols (U+2600–U+26FF) ** Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs (U+1F300–U+1F5FF) ** Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs (U+1F900–1F9FF) ** Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A ** Transport and Map Symbols (U+1F680..U+1F6FF) ** Additional emoji can be found in the following Unicode blocks: Arrows, Basic Latin, CJK Symbols and Punctuation, Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement,

, Enclosed CJK Letters and Months, Enclosed Ideographic Supplement, General Punctuation,

Geometric Shapes A shape is a graphics, graphical representation of an object's form or its external boundary, outline, or external Surface (mathematics), surface. It is distinct from other object properties, such as color, Surface texture, texture, or material ...

, Latin-1 Supplement, Letterlike Symbols, Mahjong Tiles, Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows,

, Playing Cards, and Supplemental Arrows-B. * Miscellaneous ** Alchemical Symbols (U+1F700–U+1F77F) ** Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols (U+1EE00–U+1EEFF) ** Block Elements (U+2580–U+259F) ** Box Drawing (U+2500–U+257F) ** CJK Compatibility (U+3300–U+33FF) **

Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols is a Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes (code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative ...

(U+20D0–U+20FF) ** Common Indic Number Forms (U+A830–U+A83F) ** Counting Rod Numerals (U+1D360–U+1D37F) ** Enclosed CJK Letters and Months (U+3200–U+32FF) **

(U+25A0–U+25FF) ** Geometric Shapes Extended (U+1F780-U+1F7FF) ** Indic Siyaq Numbers (U+1EC70–U+1ECBF) ** Kaktovik Numerals (U+1D2C0–U+1D2DF) ** Mayan Numerals (U+1D2E0–U+1D2FF) ** Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (U+2B00–U+2BFF) ** Ornamental Dingbats (U+1F650-U+1F67F) ** Ottoman Siyaq Numbers (U+1ED00–U+1ED4F) ** Religious and political symbols (various blocks) ** Rumi Numeral Symbols (U+10E60–U+10E7F) ** Supplemental Punctuation (U+2E00–U+2E7F) ** Symbols for Legacy Computing (U+1FB00–U+1FBFF) ** Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement (U+1CC00–1CEBF) ** Tai Xuan Jing Symbols (U+1D300–U+1D35F) ** Yijing Hexagram Symbols (U+4DC0–U+4DFF)

References

External links

Unicode character code charts
— unicode.org

on unicode.org
Look up by name, code point, or type (e.g. "Thai characters")
on unicodelookup.com
shapecatcher.com
— Search through characters by sketching one. {{Unicode navigation Symbols

Symbol block list

See also

References

External links