General Punctuation

See also: Supplemental Punctuation (Unicode block)

Short description: Unicode character block

General Punctuation

Range| U+2000..U+206F
(112 code points)
Plane| BMP
Scripts| Common (109 char.)
Inherited (2 char.)
Symbol sets| Punctuation
Spaces
Format controls
Assigned| 111 code points
Unused| 1 reserved code points
6 deprecated
Unicode version history
1.0.0| 67 (+67)
1.1| 76 (+9)
3.0| 83 (+7)
3.2| 95 (+12)
4.0| 97 (+2)
4.1| 106 (+9)
5.1| 107 (+1)
6.3| 111 (+4)
Note: [1][2]

General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic and novel punctuation such as the interrobang, and invisible mathematical operators.

Additional punctuation characters are in the Supplemental Punctuation block and sprinkled in dozens of other Unicode blocks.

## Contents

* 1 Block
* 2 Variation selectors
* 3 Emoji
* 4 History
* 5 References

## Block

Template:Unicode chart General Punctuation

Several characters in this block are usually not rendered with a directly visible glyph. Ten whitespace characters—U+2002 through U+200B (fixed en or 1⁄2 em, em, 1⁄3 em, 1⁄4 em, 1⁄6 em, figure and punctuation space, variable thin or 1⁄5 em and hair space, fixed zero-width space)—and U+205F (math medium or 2⁄9 em space) differ by horizontal width, while U+2000 and U+2001 (en and em quad) are effectively aliases of U+2002 and U+2003, respectively; another two, U+202F and U+2060 (ill-termed word joiner), are variants of U+2009 or U+2004 and U+200B that prohibit line breaks. Three zero-width characters, U+200B through U+200D (space, non-joiner and joiner), differ in how they affect ligation and shaping of adjacent letters such as contextual forms in Arabic. Eleven invisible characters—U+200E, U+200F (left-to-right and right-to-left mark), U+202A through U+202E (embeds, pops and overrides) and U+2066 through U+2069 (isolates)—control the directionality of text unless higher-level markup overrides them. There are explicit line and paragraph separators at U+2028 and U+2029.

## Variation selectors

This block has variation sequences defined for East Asian punctuation positional variants of the curly quotation marks . U+FE00 VARIATION SELECTOR-1 (VS01) and U+FE01 VARIATION SELECTOR-2 (VS02) are used for East Asian punctuation positional variants.[3] U+FE02 VARIATION SELECTOR-3 (VS03) is used for Sibe positional variants.[4]

Variation sequences for fullwidth quotation marks  U+ | 2018 | 2019 | 201C | 201D | Description

|
|
|
|
|

base code point | ‘ | ’ | “ | ” |
base + VS01 | ‘︀ | ’︀ | “︀ | ”︀ | non-fullwidth form
base + VS02 | ‘︁ | ’︁ | “︁ | ”︁ | justified fullwidth form
base + VS03 | ‘︂ | ’︂ | “︂ | ”︂ | Sibe form

The non-fullwidth forms are expected to be separated with a space on one side, the fullwidth forms are not:

The red registration corners mark the glyph metrics and show how the glyph aligns within the space allotted to the character. For variable-width display (left), an adjacent space is expected; for full-width CJK display (right), a space is not necessary.

In vertical text, the fullwidth forms should display somewhat differently, and even as regular CJK quotation marks 「...」 and 『...』 if the vertical orientation property is set to "Hans":

CJK behaviour of generic quotation marks in horizontal and vertical text when variation selector VS02 is appended. The 'horizontal' column at left is the 'VS2' column of the preceding table.

## Emoji

| This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

|

The General Punctuation block contains two emoji: U+203C and U+2049.[5][6]

The block has four standardized variants defined to specify emoji-style (U+FE0F VS16) or text presentation (U+FE0E VS15) for the two emoji, both of which default to a text presentation.[7]

Emoji variation sequences  U+ | 203C | 2049

|
|

base code point | ‼ | ⁉
base+VS15 (text) | ‼︎ | ⁉︎
base+VS16 (emoji) | ‼️ | ⁉️

## History

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

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

|
|
|
|
|
|

1.0.0 | U+2000..202E, 2030..203E, 2040..2044 | 67 |  |  |  | (to be determined)
| L2/11-438[lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3] | N4182 | Edberg, Peter (2011-12-22), Emoji Variation Sequences (Revision of L2/11-429)
| L2/17-103 |  | Moore, Lisa (2017-05-18), UTC #151 Minutes
| L2/21-009 |  | Moore, Lisa (2021-01-27), UTC #166 Minutes
| L2/23-238R |  | Anderson, Deborah; Kučera, Jan; Whistler, Ken; Pournader, Roozbeh; Constable, Peter (2023-11-01), Recommendations to UTC #177 November 2023 on Script Proposals
| L2/23-231 |  | Constable, Peter (2023-12-08), UTC #177 Minutes, "Add ... eight standardized variation sequences, based on L2/23-212R [Affects U+2018, 2019, 201C, and 201D]"
| L2/25-028 |  | Sim, CheonHyeong (2025-01-08), Proposal to Add VS3 for Sibe Quotation Marks [Affects U+2018, 2019, 201C, and 201D]
| L2/25-010 |  | Kučera, Jan (2025-01-16), Recommendations to UTC #182 (January 2025) on Script Proposals
| L2/25-003 |  | Leroy, Robin (2025-01-28), UTC #182 Minutes, "Accept the proposal to add [...] four standardized variation sequences"
1.1 | U+203F, 2045..2046 | 3 |  |  |  | (to be determined)
U+206A..206F | 6 |  |  |  | (to be determined)
UTC/1992-xxx |  |  | Freytag, Asmus (1992-05-12), Unconfirmed minutes for UTC Meeting #52, May 8, 1992 at Xerox
| L2/01-301 |  | Whistler, Ken (2001-08-01), Analysis of Character Deprecation in the Unicode Standard
| L2/01-326 |  | Davis, Mark (2001-08-15), New Properties: Reserved_Cf_Code_Point & Deprecated
| L2/01-295R |  | Moore, Lisa (2001-11-06), Minutes from the UTC/L2 meeting #88
3.0 | U+202F, 2048..2049 | 3 |  | L2/97-288 | N1603 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1997-10-24), Unconfirmed Meeting Minutes, WG 2 Meeting # 33, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 20 June – 4 July 1997
| L2/98-088 | N1711 |  The Working Meeting on Mongolian Encoding Attended by Representatives of China and Mongolia, 1998-02-15
| L2/98-104 | N1734 | Whistler, Ken (1998-03-20), Comments on the Mongolian Encoding Proposal, WG2 N1711
| L2/98-252 (pdf, txt) | N1833RM (pdf, doc) | Moore, Richard (1998-05-04), Feedback on Ken Whistler's Comments on Mongolian Encoding: N 1734
| L2/98-251 (pdf, html, txt) | N1808 (pdf, doc) |  Reply to "Proposal WG2 N1734" Raised at the Seattle Meeting Regarding "Proposal WG 2 N1711", 1998-07-09
| 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
|  | N1862 |  Revision of N1711 - Mongolian, 1998-09-17
|  | N1865 |  US Position - Mongolian (N1711, N1734 and N1808), 1998-09-18
|  | N1918 | Paterson, Bruce (1998-10-28), Text for Combined PDAM registration and consideration ballot - SC2 N 3208
| L2/99-010 | N1903 (pdf, html, doc) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
| L2/99-075.1 | N1973 |  Irish Comments on SC 2 N 3208, 1999-01-19
| L2/99-075 | N1972 (pdf, html, doc) |  Summary of Voting on SC 2 N 3208, PDAM ballot on WD for ISO/IEC 10646-1/Amd. 29: Mongolian, 1999-02-12
|  | N2020 | Paterson, Bruce (1999-04-05), FPDAM 29 Text - Mongolian
| L2/99-113 |  |  Text for FPDAM ballot of ISO/IEC 10646, Amd. 29 - Mongolian, 1999-04-06
| L2/99-232 | N2003 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1999-08-03), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 36, Fukuoka, Japan, 1999-03-09--15
| L2/99-304 | N2126 | Paterson, Bruce (1999-10-01), Revised Text for FDAM ballot of ISO/IEC 10646-1/FDAM 29, AMENDMENT 29: Mongolian
| L2/99-381 |  |  Final text for ISO/IEC 10646-1, FDAM 29 -- Mongolian, 1999-12-07
| L2/00-010 | N2103 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-01-05), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 37, Copenhagen, Denmark: 1999-09-13—16
| L2/07-209 |  | Whistler, Ken (2007-07-05), UTR 14 and U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
| L2/11-438[lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3] | N4182 | Edberg, Peter (2011-12-22), Emoji Variation Sequences (Revision of L2/11-429)
| L2/15-187 |  | Moore, Lisa (2015-08-11), UTC #144 Minutes
| L2/16-258 | N4752R2 | Eck, Greg (2016-09-19), Mongolian Base Forms, Positional Forms, & Variant Forms
| L2/16-259 | N4753 | Eck, Greg; Rileke, Orlog Ou (2016-09-20), WG2 #65 Mongolian Discussion Points
| L2/16-266 | N4763 | Anderson, Deborah; Whistler, Ken; McGowan, Rick; Pournader, Roozbeh; Glass, Andrew; Iancu, Laurențiu; Moore, Lisa (2016-09-26), Comments on Mongolian, Small Khitan, and other WG2 #65 documents
| L2/16-297 | N4769 | Anderson, Deborah (2016-10-27), Mongolian ad hoc report
| 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
| L2/98-292R (pdf, html, Figure 1) |  |  Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-19
| L2/98-292 | N1840 |  Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-25
| L2/98-301 | N1847 | Everson, Michael (1998-09-12), Responses to NCITS/L2 and Unicode Consortium comments on numerous proposals
| L2/98-372 | N1884R2 (pdf, doc) | Whistler, Ken (1998-09-22), Additional Characters for the UCS
| L2/98-329 | N1920 |  Combined PDAM registration and consideration ballot on WD for ISO/IEC 10646-1/Amd. 30, AMENDMENT 30: Additional Latin and other characters, 1998-10-28
| L2/99-010 | N1903 (pdf, html, doc) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
U+204B..204D | 3 |  | L2/98-215 | N1748 | Everson, Michael (1998-05-25), Additional signature mark characters for the UCS
| 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
| L2/98-292R (pdf, html, Figure 1) |  |  Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-19
| L2/98-292 | N1840 |  Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-25
| L2/98-301 | N1847 | Everson, Michael (1998-09-12), Responses to NCITS/L2 and Unicode Consortium comments on numerous proposals
| L2/98-372 | N1884R2 (pdf, doc) | Whistler, Ken (1998-09-22), Additional Characters for the UCS
| L2/98-329 | N1920 |  Combined PDAM registration and consideration ballot on WD for ISO/IEC 10646-1/Amd. 30, AMENDMENT 30: Additional Latin and other characters, 1998-10-28
| L2/99-010 | N1903 (pdf, html, doc) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
3.2 | U+2047, 2051 | 2 |  | L2/99-238 |  |  Consolidated document containing 6 Japanese proposals, 1999-07-15
|  | N2092 |  Addition of forty eight characters, 1999-09-13
| L2/99-365 |  | Moore, Lisa (1999-11-23), Comments on JCS Proposals
| L2/00-024 |  | Shibano, Kohji (2000-01-31), JCS proposal revised
| L2/99-260R |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-02-07), Minutes of the UTC/L2 meeting in Mission Viejo, October 26-28, 1999
| L2/00-098, L2/00-098-page5 | N2195 |  Rationale for non-Kanji characters proposed by JCS committee, 2000-03-15
| L2/00-119[lower-alpha 4] | N2191R | Whistler, Ken; Freytag, Asmus (2000-04-19), Encoding Additional Mathematical Symbols in Unicode
| L2/00-234 | N2203 (rtf, txt) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-07-21), Minutes from the SC2/WG2 meeting in Beijing, 2000-03-21 -- 24
| L2/00-115R2 |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-08-08), Minutes Of UTC Meeting #83
| L2/00-297 | N2257 | Sato, T. K. (2000-09-04), JIS X 0213 symbols part-1
| L2/00-342 | N2278 | Sato, T. K.; Everson, Michael; Whistler, Ken; Freytag, Asmus (2000-09-20), Ad hoc Report on Japan feedback N2257 and N2258
| L2/01-050 | N2253 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-01-21), Minutes of the SC2/WG2 meeting in Athens, September 2000
U+204E..2050, 2057, 205F, 2061..2062 | 7 |  | L2/00-005R2 |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-02-14), Minutes of UTC #82 in San Jose
| L2/00-119[lower-alpha 4] | N2191R | Whistler, Ken; Freytag, Asmus (2000-04-19), Encoding Additional Mathematical Symbols in Unicode
| L2/00-234 | N2203 (rtf, txt) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-07-21), Minutes from the SC2/WG2 meeting in Beijing, 2000-03-21 -- 24
| L2/00-115R2 |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-08-08), Minutes Of UTC Meeting #83
| L2/01-156 | N2356 | Freytag, Asmus (2001-04-03), Additional Mathematical Characters (Draft 10)
| L2/01-344 | N2353 (pdf, doc) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-09-09), Minutes from SC2/WG2 meeting #40 -- Mountain View, April 2001
U+2060 | 1 |  | L2/99-260R |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-02-07), Minutes of the UTC/L2 meeting in Mission Viejo, October 26-28, 1999
| L2/00-005R2 |  | Moore, Lisa (2000-02-14), Minutes of UTC #82 in San Jose, "Action Item for Arnold Winkler: As the zero width grapheme break/join proposal was withdrawn, re-open Action Item 81-12 (for Mark Davis to prepare a proposal for WG2 for the Zero Width Word Joiner.)"
| L2/00-258 | N2235 | Davis, Mark (2000-08-09), Proposal for addition of ZERO WIDTH WORD JOINER
| L2/00-369 |  | Whistler, Ken (2000-10-06), WG2 in Vouliagmeni (Athens)
| L2/01-050 | N2253 | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-01-21), Minutes of the SC2/WG2 meeting in Athens, September 2000
4.0 | U+2053..2054 | 2 |  | L2/02-141 | N2419 | Everson, Michael (2002-03-20), Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS
| L2/02-192 |  | Everson, Michael (2002-05-02), Everson's Reply on UPA
|  | N2442 | Everson, Michael; Kolehmainen, Erkki I.; Ruppel, Klaas; Trosterud, Trond (2002-05-21), Justification for placing the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet in the BMP
| L2/02-291 |  | Whistler, Ken (2002-05-31), WG2 report from Dublin
| L2/02-292 |  | Whistler, Ken (2002-06-03), Early look at WG2 consent docket
| L2/02-166R2 |  | Moore, Lisa (2002-08-09), UTC #91 Minutes
| L2/02-253 |  | Moore, Lisa (2002-10-21), UTC #92 Minutes
| L2/03-136 |  | Moore, Lisa (2003-08-18), UTC #95 Minutes
U+2056, 2058..2059 | 3 |  | L2/03-282R | N2610R | Everson, Michael; Cleminson, Ralph (2003-09-04), Final proposal for encoding the Glagolitic script in the UCS
| L2/03-324 | N2642 | Pantelia, Maria (2003-10-06), Proposal to encode additional Greek editorial and punctuation characters in the UCS
U+205A..205C | 3 |  | L2/03-157 |  | Pantelia, Maria (2003-05-19), Additional Beta Code Characters not in Unicode (WIP)
| L2/03-193R | N2612-7 | Pantelia, Maria (2003-06-11), Proposal to encode additional Punctuation Characters in the UCS
U+205D | 1 |  | L2/02-312R |  | Pantelia, Maria (2002-11-07), Proposal to encode additional Greek editorial and punctuation characters in the UCS
| L2/03-324 | N2642 | Pantelia, Maria (2003-10-06), Proposal to encode additional Greek editorial and punctuation characters in the UCS
U+205E | 1 |  | L2/03-354 | N2655 | Freytag, Asmus (2003-10-10), Proposal -- Symbols used in Dictionaries
| L2/03-356R2 |  | Moore, Lisa (2003-10-22), UTC #97 Minutes
5.1 | U+2064 | 1 |  | L2/07-011R | N3198R | Freytag, Asmus; Beeton, Barbara; Ion, Patrick; Sargent, Murray; Carlisle, David; Pournader, Roozbeh (2007-01-15), 29 Additional Mathematical and Symbol Characters
| L2/07-015 |  | Moore, Lisa (2007-02-08), UTC #110 Minutes
| L2/07-268 | N3253 (pdf, doc) | Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2007-07-26), Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 50, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; 2007-04-24/27
6.3 | U+2066..2069 | 4 |  | L2/12-186R |  | Lanin, Aharon; Davis, Mark; Pournader, Roozbeh (2012-07-24), A Proposal for Bidi Isolates in Unicode
| L2/12-290 | N4310 | Lanin, Aharon; Davis, Mark; Pournader, Roozbeh (2012-07-31), Proposal for Four Characters for Bidi
| L2/12-239 |  | Moore, Lisa (2012-08-14), UTC #132 Minutes
| L2/13-040 |  | Pournader, Roozbeh; Lanin, Aharon (2013-01-29), Fasttracking Arabic Letter Mark (ALM)
| L2/13-125 | N4447 | Constable, Peter (2013-06-10), Unicode Liaison Report to WG2

1. ↑ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 See also L2/10-458, L2/11-414, L2/11-415, and L2/11-429
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block for additional emoji-related documents
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B block for additional math-related documents

## 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. ↑ Lunde, Ken (2023-10-14). "L2/23-212R: Proposal to add standardized variation sequences for four quotation marks". https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2023/23212r-quotes-svs-proposal.pdf.
4. ↑ CheonHyeong, Sim (2025-01-08). "L2/25-028: Proposal to Add VS3 for Sibe Quotation Marks". https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2025/25028-vs3-sibe-quotation-marks.pdf.
5. ↑ "UTR #51: Unicode Emoji". Unicode Consortium. 2023-09-05. https://unicode.org/reports/tr51/.
6. ↑ "UCD: Emoji Data for UTR #51". Unicode Consortium. 2023-02-01. https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/emoji/emoji-data.txt.
7. ↑ "UTS #51 Emoji Variation Sequences". The Unicode Consortium. https://www.unicode.org/Public/latest/ucd/emoji/emoji-variation-sequences.txt.

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General Punctuation. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=General_Punctuation&oldid=3979473"