In
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, a Unicode symbol is a
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
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/
IEC
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
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. (
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. Box-drawing characters typically only work well with monospaced fonts. ...
s are a partial exception, for legacy purposes, and 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, which contains various common symbols which are related to and used in the various technical, programming language, and academic professions. For example:
* Symbol ⌂ (H ...
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, monochro ...
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 emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conv ...
s
ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by famili ...
s,
graphic symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
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 c ...
)
**
Currency Symbols (U+20A0–U+20CF)
**
General Punctuation (U+2000–U+206F)
**
Letterlike Symbols (U+2100–U+214F)
**
Number Forms
Number Forms is a Unicode block containing Unicode compatibility characters that have specific meaning as numbers, but are constructed from other characters. They consist primarily of vulgar fractions and Roman numerals. In addition to the cha ...
(U+2150–U+218F)
**
Phonetic symbols (including IPA) (various blocks)
**
Superscripts and Subscripts (U+2070–U+209F)
* Enclosed variants
**
Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement (1F100–1F1FF)
**
Enclosed Alphanumerics
Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of 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 Multilingual Plan ...
(U+2460–U+24FF)
**
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement is a Unicode block containing forms of characters and words from Chinese, Japanese and Korean enclosed within or stylised as squares, brackets, or circles. It contains three such characters containing one or more ...
(1F200–1F2FF)
* Arrows
**
Arrows (U+2190–U+21FF)
**
Dingbats arrows (U+2794–U+27BF)
**
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows is a Unicode block containing arrows and geometric shapes with various fills, astrological symbols, technical symbols, intonation marks, and others.
Block
Emoji
The Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block co ...
(U+2B00–U+2BFF)
**
Supplemental Arrows-A
Supplemental Arrows-A is a Unicode block containing various arrow symbols.
Block
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Supplemental Arrows-A block:
See also ...
(U+27F0–U+27FF)
**
Supplemental Arrows-B
Supplemental Arrows-B is a Unicode block containing miscellaneous arrows, arrow tails, crossing arrows used in knot descriptions, curved arrows, and harpoons.
Block
Emoji
The Supplemental Arrows-B block contains two emoji:
U+2934–U+2935. ...
(U+2900–U+297F)
**
Supplemental Arrows-C
Supplemental Arrows-C 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 documentation ...
(U+1F800-U+1F8FF)
* Mathematical
**
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is a Unicode block comprising styled forms of Latin and Greek letters and decimal digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different letter styles. The letters in various fonts o ...
(U+1D400–U+1D7FF)
**
Mathematical Operators
Mathematical Operators is a Unicode block containing characters for mathematical, logical, and set notation.
Notably absent are the plus sign (+), greater than sign (>) and less than sign (<), due to them already appearing in the Bas ...
(U+2200–U+22FF)
**
Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A
Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A is a Unicode block containing characters for mathematical, logical, and database notation.
Character table
Compact table
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process ...
(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
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block.
All of the characters in the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block ...
(U+1FA70–1FAFF)
**
Supplemental Mathematical Operators (U+2A00–U+2AFF)
* Technical
**
Control Pictures
Control Pictures 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 documentation purpos ...
(U+2400–U+243F)
**
Miscellaneous Technical
Miscellaneous Technical is a Unicode block ranging from U+2300 to U+23FF, which contains various common symbols which are related to and used in the various technical, programming language, and academic professions. For example:
* Symbol ⌂ (H ...
(U+2300–U+23FF)
**
Optical Character Recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...
(U+2440–U+245F)
* Musical
**
Znamenny Musical Notation
Znamenny Musical Notation is a Unicode block containing characters for Znamenny musical notation from Russia.
Few fonts support this block as of 2021. Ones that do and are free for personal use include '' Symbola'' 14.0 and Slavonic' 1.00 (non-c ...
(U+1CF00–1CFCF)
**
Ancient Greek Musical Notation
Ancient Greek Musical Notation 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 docu ...
(U+1D200–U+1D24F)
**
Byzantine Musical Symbols
Byzantine Musical Symbols is a Unicode block containing characters for representing Byzantine-era musical notation.
Block
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Byza ...
(U+1D000–U+1D0FF)
**
Musical Symbols
Musical symbols are marks and symbols in musical notation that indicate various aspects of how a piece of music is to be performed. There are symbols to communicate information about many musical elements, including Pitch (music), pitch, Duration ...
(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 in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, as well as symbols representing game pieces for xiangqi
''Xiangqi'' ( ...
(U+1FA00–1FA6F)
**
Domino Tiles
Domino Tiles is a Unicode block containing characters for representing game situations in dominoes. The block includes symbols for the standard six dot tile set and backs in horizontal and vertical orientations.
History
The following Unicod ...
(U+1F030–U+1F09F)
**
Mahjong Tiles
Mahjong tiles () are tiles of Chinese origin that are used to play mahjong as well as mahjong solitaire and other games. Although they are most commonly tiles, they may refer to playing cards with similar contents as well.
Development
The ...
(U+1F000–U+1F02F)
**
Playing Cards
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...
(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
An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for "emotion icon", also known simply as an emote, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, m ...
(U+1F600–U+1F64F)
**
Miscellaneous Symbols
Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, Bagua, ...
(U+2600–U+26FF)
**
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally from ...
(U+1F300–U+1F5FF)
**
Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs (U+1F900–1F9FF)
**
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A
Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block.
All of the characters in the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block ...
**
Transport and Map Symbols
Transport and Map Symbols is a Unicode block containing transportation and map icons, largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' emoji implementations of Shift JIS, and to encode characters in the Wingdings and Wingdings 2 char ...
(U+1F680..U+1F6FF)
** Additional emoji can be found in the following Unicode blocks:
Arrows,
Basic Latin,
CJK Symbols and Punctuation
CJK Symbols and Punctuation is a Unicode block containing symbols and punctuation used for writing the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. It also contains one Chinese character.
Block
The block has variation sequences defined for East ...
,
Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement,
Enclosed Alphanumerics
Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of 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 Multilingual Plan ...
,
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months is a Unicode block containing circled and parenthesized Katakana, Hangul, and CJK ideographs. Also included in the block are miscellaneous glyphs that would more likely fit in CJK Compatibility or Enclosed Alpha ...
,
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement
Enclosed Ideographic Supplement is a Unicode block containing forms of characters and words from Chinese, Japanese and Korean enclosed within or stylised as squares, brackets, or circles. It contains three such characters containing one or more ...
,
General Punctuation,
Geometric Shapes
Geometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at code point range U+25A0–25FF.
U+25A0–U+25CF
The BLACK CIRCLE is displayed when typing in a password field, in order to hide characters from a screen recorder or shoulder surfing.
U+2 ...
,
Geometric Shapes
Geometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at code point range U+25A0–25FF.
U+25A0–U+25CF
The BLACK CIRCLE is displayed when typing in a password field, in order to hide characters from a screen recorder or shoulder surfing.
U+2 ...
,
Latin-1 Supplement
The Latin-1 Supplement (also called C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement) is the second Unicode block in the Unicode standard. It encodes the upper range of ISO 8859-1: 80 (U+0080) - FF (U+00FF). C1 Controls (0080–009F) are not graphic. Thi ...
,
Letterlike Symbols,
Mahjong Tiles
Mahjong tiles () are tiles of Chinese origin that are used to play mahjong as well as mahjong solitaire and other games. Although they are most commonly tiles, they may refer to playing cards with similar contents as well.
Development
The ...
,
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows is a Unicode block containing arrows and geometric shapes with various fills, astrological symbols, technical symbols, intonation marks, and others.
Block
Emoji
The Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block co ...
,
Miscellaneous Technical
Miscellaneous Technical is a Unicode block ranging from U+2300 to U+23FF, which contains various common symbols which are related to and used in the various technical, programming language, and academic professions. For example:
* Symbol ⌂ (H ...
,
Playing Cards
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...
, and
Supplemental Arrows-B
Supplemental Arrows-B is a Unicode block containing miscellaneous arrows, arrow tails, crossing arrows used in knot descriptions, curved arrows, and harpoons.
Block
Emoji
The Supplemental Arrows-B block contains two emoji:
U+2934–U+2935. ...
.
* Miscellaneous
**
Alchemical Symbols
Alchemical symbols, originally devised as part of alchemy, were used to denote some elements and some compounds until the 18th century. Although notation like this was mostly standardized, style and symbol varied between alchemists, so this pag ...
(1F700–1F77F)
**
Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic Symbols
Arabic Mathematical Alphabetic 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 ...
(1EE00–1EEFF)
**
Block Elements
Block Elements is a Unicode block containing square block symbols of various fill and shading. Used along with block elements are box-drawing characters, shade characters, and terminal graphic characters. These can be used for filling regions of th ...
(U+2580–U+259F)
**
Box Drawing (U+2500–U+257F)
**
CJK Compatibility
CJK Compatibility is a Unicode block containing square symbols (both CJK and Latin alphanumeric) encoded for compatibility with East Asian character sets. In Unicode 1.0, it was divided into two blocks, named CJK Squared Words (U+3300–U+337F) ...
(U+3300–33FF)
**
Combining Diacritical Marks for Symbols
Combining may refer to:
* Combine harvester use in agriculture
* Combining capacity, in chemistry
* Combining character, in digital typography
* Combining form, in linguistics
* Combining grapheme joiner, Unicode character that has no visible gly ...
(U+20D0–U+20FF)
**
Common Indic Number Forms
Common Indic Number Forms is a Unicode block containing characters for representing fractions in north India, Pakistan, and Nepal.
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters i ...
(U+A830–A83F)
**
Counting Rod Numerals
Counting Rod Numerals is a Unicode block containing traditional Chinese counting rod symbols, which mathematicians used for calculation in ancient China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The orientation of the Unicode characters follows Song dynasty co ...
(U+1D360–1D37F)
**
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months is a Unicode block containing circled and parenthesized Katakana, Hangul, and CJK ideographs. Also included in the block are miscellaneous glyphs that would more likely fit in CJK Compatibility or Enclosed Alpha ...
(U+3200–32FF)
**
Geometric Shapes
Geometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at code point range U+25A0–25FF.
U+25A0–U+25CF
The BLACK CIRCLE is displayed when typing in a password field, in order to hide characters from a screen recorder or shoulder surfing.
U+2 ...
(U+25A0–U+25FF)
**
Geometric Shapes Extended (U+1F780-U+1F7FF)
**
Indic Siyaq Numbers
Indic Siyaq Numbers is a Unicode block containing a specialized subset of the Arabic script that was used for accounting in India under the Mughals
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between ...
(U+1EC70–1ECBF)
**
Kaktovik Numerals
The Kaktovik numerals or Kaktovik Iñupiaq numerals are a base-20 system of numerical digits created by Alaskan Iñupiat. They are visually Iconicity, iconic, with shapes that indicate the number being represented.
The Iñupiaq language#Nume ...
(U+1D2C0–1D2DF)
**
Mayan Numerals
The Mayan numeral system was the system to represent numbers and calendar dates in the Maya civilization. It was a vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. The numerals are made up of three symbols; zero (a shell), one (a dot) and f ...
(U+1D2E0–1D2FF)
**
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows
Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows is a Unicode block containing arrows and geometric shapes with various fills, astrological symbols, technical symbols, intonation marks, and others.
Block
Emoji
The Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block co ...
(U+2B00–U+2BFF)
**
Ornamental Dingbats
Ornamental Dingbats is a Unicode block containing ornamental leaves, punctuation, and ampersands, quilt squares, and checkerboard patterns.
It is a subset of dingbat fonts Webdings, Wingdings, and Wingdings 2.
History
The following Unicode- ...
(U+1F650-U+1F67F)
**
Ottoman Siyaq Numbers (U+1ED00–1ED4F)
**
Religious and political symbols (various blocks)
**
Rumi Numeral Symbols
Rumi Numeral Symbols is a Unicode block containing numeric characters used in Fez, Morocco
Fez or Fes (; ar, فاس, fās; zgh, ⴼⵉⵣⴰⵣ, fizaz; french: Fès) is a city in northern inland Morocco and the capital of the Fès-Meknè ...
(U+10E60–10E7F)
**
Supplemental Punctuation (U+2E00–2E7F)
**
Symbols for Legacy Computing
Symbols for Legacy Computing is a Unicode block containing graphic characters that were used for various home computers from the 1970s and 1980s and in Teletext broadcasting standards. It includes characters from the Amstrad CPC, MSX, Mattel Aqu ...
(U+1FB00–1FBFF)
**
Tai Xuan Jing Symbols (U+1D300–1D35F)
**
Yijing Hexagram Symbols
Yijing Hexagram Symbols is a Unicode block containing the 64 hexagrams from the ''I Ching''.
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Yijing Hexagram Symbols block:
...
(U+4DC0–4DFF)
See also
*
Special characters
As of Unicode version 15.0, there are 149,186 characters with code points, covering 161 modern and historical scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets. This article includes the 1062 characters in the Multilingual European Character Set 2 (MES ...
*
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 documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ad ...
*
Universal Character Set characters
The Unicode Consortium and the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/ WG 2 jointly collaborate on the list of the characters in the Universal Coded Character Set. The Universal Coded Character Set, most commonly called the Universal Character Set ( UCS, officia ...
References
External links
Unicode character code charts*
ttp://shapecatcher.com shapecatcher.com— Search through characters by sketching one.
{{Unicode navigation
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
Unicode