Optical Character Recognition (Unicode block)

Short description: Unicode character block

Optical Character Recognition

Range| U+2440..U+245F
(32 code points)
Plane| BMP
Scripts| Common
Symbol sets| OCR controls
Assigned| 11 code points
Unused| 21 reserved code points
Source standards| ISO 2033
Unicode version history
1.0.0| 11 (+11)
Note: [1][2]

Optical Character Recognition is a Unicode block containing signal characters for OCR and MICR standards.

## Contents

* 1 Block
* 2 Subheadings
* 2.1 OCR-A
* 2.2 MICR
* 2.3 OCR
* 3 History
* 4 References

## Block

Optical Character Recognition[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F
U+244x  | ⑀ | ⑁ | ⑂ | ⑃ | ⑄ | ⑅ | ⑆ | ⑇ | ⑈ | ⑉ | ⑊ |  |  |  |  |
U+245x  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 13.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

## Subheadings

The Optical Character Recognition block has three informal subheadings (groupings) within its character collection: OCR-A, MICR, and OCR.[3]

### OCR-A

Further information: OCR-A

A partly redacted German cheque, showing use of ⑂, ⑀ and ⑁ in the machine-readable line

The OCR-A subheading contains six characters taken from the OCR-A font described in the ISO 1073-1:1976 standard: U+2440 ⑀ OCR HOOK, U+2441 ⑁ OCR CHAIR, U+2442 ⑂ OCR FORK, U+2443 ⑃ OCR INVERTED FORK, U+2444 ⑄ OCR BELT BUCKLE, and U+2445 ⑅ OCR BOW TIE. The OCR bow tie is given the informative alias "unique asterisk".

### MICR

Further information: Magnetic ink character recognition

A British style cheque for a fictional bank, showing use of ⑆, ⑈ and ⑉ in the machine-readable line

The MICR subheading contains four punctuation characters for bank cheque identifiers, taken from the magnetic ink character recognition E-13B font (codified in the ISO 1004:1995 standard): U+2446 ⑆ OCR BRANCH BANK IDENTIFICATION, U+2447 ⑇ OCR AMOUNT OF CHECK, U+2448 ⑈ OCR DASH, and U+2449 ⑉ OCR CUSTOMER ACCOUNT NUMBER.

The latter two characters are misnamed: their names were inadvertently switched when they were named in the 1993 (first) edition of ISO/IEC 10646,[4] a mistake which had been present since Unicode 1.0.0.[5] Although their formal names remain unchanged due to the Unicode stability policy, they both have corrected normative aliases: U+2448 ⑈ is MICR ON US SYMBOL, and U+2449 ⑉ is MICR DASH SYMBOL[6] (the standard notes that "the Unicode character names include several misnomers").

These symbols had previously been encoded by the ISO-IR-98 encoding defined by ISO 2033:1983, in which they were simply named SYMBOL ONE through SYMBOL FOUR.[7] All four characters have informative aliases in the Unicode charts: "transit", "amount", "on us", and "dash" respectively.

### OCR

The OCR subheading consists of a single character: U+244A ⑊ OCR DOUBLE BACKSLASH.

## History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Optical Character Recognition block:

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

|
|
|
|
|

1.0.0 | U+2440..244A | 11 |  |  | (to be determined)
L2/10-416R |  | Moore, Lisa (2010-11-09), UTC #125 / L2 #222 Minutes, "Create two formal aliases, U+2448 MICR ON US SYMBOL and U+2449 MICR DASH SYMBOL for Unicode 6.1."
| N4103 |  Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, 2012-01-03
L2/22-065 |  | Whistler, Ken (2022-04-13), Editorial Committee Report and Recommendations for UTC #171Meeting

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/. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
2. ↑ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. https://www.unicode.org/versions/enumeratedversions.html. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
3. ↑ "Unicode Code Charts: Optical Character Recognition". The Unicode Standard, Version 6.3. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2440.pdf. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
4. ↑ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2 (2012-01-03), Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, p. 29, SC2 N4188 / WG2 N4103, https://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4103.pdf
5. ↑ "3.8: Block-by-Block Charts". The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium. https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode1.0.0/CodeCharts2.pdf.
6. ↑ Freytag, Asmus; McGowan, Rick; Whistler, Ken (2017-04-10), Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names (4 ed.), Unicode Consortium, Unicode Technical Note #27, https://www.unicode.org/notes/tn27/tn27-4.html
7. ↑ ISO/TC97/SC2 (1985-08-01), ISO-IR-98: E13B Graphic Character Set, ITSCJ/IPSJ, https://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/iso-ir/098.pdf

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