Variation Selectors (Unicode block)

See also: Variation Selectors Supplement (Unicode block)

Short description: Unicode character block

Variation Selectors

Range| U+FE00..U+FE0F
(16 code points)
Plane| BMP
Scripts| Inherited
Assigned| 16 code points
Unused| 0 reserved code points
Unicode version history
3.2| 16 (+16)
Note: [1][2]

Variation Selectors is a Unicode block containing 16 variation selectors used to specify a glyph variant for a preceding character. They are currently used to specify standardized variation sequences for mathematical symbols, emoji symbols, 'Phags-pa letters, and CJK unified ideographs corresponding to CJK compatibility ideographs. At present only standardized variation sequences with VS1, VS2, VS3, VS15 and VS16 have been defined; VS15 and VS16 are reserved to request that a character should be displayed as text or as an emoji respectively.[3][4]

These combining characters are named variation selector-1 (for U+FE00) through to variation selector-16 (U+FE0F), and are abbreviated VS1 – VS16. Each applies to the immediately preceding character.

As of Unicode 13.0:[5]

* CJK compatibility ideograph variation sequences contain VS1-VS3 (U+FE00-U+FE02)
* CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A and B variation sequences contain VS1 (U+FE00) and VS2 (U+FE01)
* Emoji variation sequences contain VS16 (U+FE0F) for emoji-style (with color) or VS15 (U+FE0E) for text style (monochrome)
* Basic Latin, Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms, Manichaean, Myanmar, Myanmar Extended-A, Phags-pa, and mathematical variation sequences contain only VS1 (U+FE00)
* VS4-VS14 (U+FE03-U+FE0D) are not used for any variation sequences

This list is continued in the Variation Selectors Supplement.

## See also

* Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs § Emoji modifiers
* Variant form (Unicode)

## History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Variation Selectors block:

Version | Final code points[lower-alpha 1] | Count | L2 ID | WG2 ID | Document

|
|
|
|
|

L2/98-039 |  | Aliprand, Joan; Winkler, Arnold (1998-02-24), Preliminary Minutes - UTC #74 & L2 #171, Mountain View, CA - December 5, 1997
L2/98-277 |  | Hiura, Hideki; Kobayashi, Tatsuo (1998-07-29), Plane 14 Variant tag
L2/98-281R (pdf, html) |  | Aliprand, Joan (1998-07-31), Unconfirmed Minutes - UTC #77 & NCITS Subgroup L2 # 174 JOINT MEETING, Redmond, WA -- July 29-31, 1998
L2/00-187 |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-08-23), UTC minutes -- Boston, August 8-11, 2000
L2/01-268 |  | Freytag, Asmus (2001-06-27), Variant selector
L2/01-309 |  | Jenkins, John (2001-08-08), Variation selectors and Han
L2/01-295R |  | Moore, Lisa (2001-11-06), Minutes from the UTC/L2 meeting #88
L2/02-154 | N2403 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2002-04-22), Draft minutes of WG 2 meeting 41, Hotel Phoenix, Singapore, 2001-10-15/19
L2/17-103 |  | Moore, Lisa (2017-05-18), UTC #151 Minutes

1. ↑ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names

## References

1. ↑ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/ucd/.
2. ↑ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/versions/enumeratedversions.html.
3. ↑ "StandardizedVariants.txt". Unicode Consortium. 2015-11-20. https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/StandardizedVariants.txt.
4. ↑ "Emoji Variation Sequences". Unicode Consortium. 2020-09-18. http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Emoji_Variation_Sequences.
5. ↑ "UCD: Standardized Variation Sequences". Unicode Consortium. https://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/StandardizedVariants.txt.

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*[VS15]: text
*[VS16]: emoji