Unicode symbol

For symbols not encoded yet, see Symbol.

In computing, a Unicode symbol is a Unicode 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 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."[1] 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.[2] (Legacy characters such as box-drawing characters, Symbols for Legacy Computing and the Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement, are an exception, since these symbols largely exist for backward compatibility with past encoding systems; a number of electronic diagram symbols are indeed encoded in Unicode's Miscellaneous Technical block.) For adequate treatment in plain text, symbols must also be displayable in a monochromatic setting. Even with these limitations - monochromatic, one-dimensional and standards-based - the domain of potential Unicode symbols is extensive. (However, emojis - ideograms, graphic symbols - that were admitted into Unicode, allow colors although the colors are not standardized. Color-dependent emojis are traditionally rendered using hatching in monochromatic settings.)

## Symbol block list

[edit]

There are 154,998 characters, with Unicode 16.0,[3][4] including the following symbol blocks:

* Alphanumeric variants (based on Latin characters in Unicode)
* 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 (U+2070–U+209F)
* Enclosed variants
* Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement (U+1F100–U+1F1FF)
* Enclosed Alphanumerics (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 (U+1D400–U+1D7FF)
* Mathematical Operators (U+2200–U+22FF)
* Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A (U+27C0–U+27EF)
* Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B (U+2980–U+29FF)
* Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A (U+1FA70–U+1FAFF)
* Supplemental Mathematical Operators (U+2A00–U+2AFF)
* Technical
* Control Pictures (U+2400–U+243F)
* Miscellaneous Technical (U+2300–U+23FF)
* Optical Character Recognition (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 (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 (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 Alphanumerics, Enclosed CJK Letters and Months, Enclosed Ideographic Supplement, General Punctuation, Geometric Shapes, Latin-1 Supplement, Letterlike Symbols, Mahjong Tiles, Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows, Miscellaneous Technical, 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 (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)
* Geometric Shapes (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)

## See also

[edit]

* Special characters
* Unicode block
* Universal Character Set characters

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Section 22: Symbols". The Unicode Standard. The Unicode Consortium. September 2024.
2. ^ "Section 22: Miscellaneous Technical". The Unicode Standard. The Unicode Consortium. September 2024.
3. ^ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
4. ^ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2020-03-15.

## External links

[edit]

* Unicode character code charts — unicode.org
* Draft Unicode Technical Report #25: Unicode Support for Mathematics 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.

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Unicode

Unicode|

* Unicode Consortium
* ISO/IEC 10646 (Universal Character Set)
* Versions

Code points|

* Block
* List
* Universal Character Set
* Character charts
* Character property
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* Private Use Area

Characters|

| Special purpose|

* BOM
* Combining grapheme joiner
* Left-to-right mark / Right-to-left mark
* Soft hyphen
* Variant form
* Word joiner
* Zero-width joiner
* Zero-width non-joiner
* Zero-width space

|

Lists|

* Characters
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* Combining character
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* Numerals
* Scripts
* Spaces
* Symbols
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* Alias names and abbreviations
* Whitespace characters

Processing|

| Algorithms|

* Bidirectional text
* Collation
* ISO/IEC 14651
* Equivalence
* Variation sequences
* International Ideographs Core

|

Comparison of encodings|

* BOCU-1
* CESU-8
* Punycode
* SCSU
* UTF-1
* UTF-7
* UTF-8
* UTF-16/UCS-2
* UTF-32/UCS-4
* UTF-EBCDIC

On pairs of
code points|

* Combining character
* Compatibility characters
* Duplicate characters
* Equivalence
* Homoglyph
* Precomposed character
* list
* Z-variant
* Variation sequences
* Regional indicator symbol
* Emoji skin color

Usage|

* Domain names (IDN)
* Email
* Fonts
* HTML
* entity references
* numeric references
* Input
* International Ideographs Core

Related standards|

* Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR)
* GB 18030
* ISO/IEC 8859
* DIN 91379
* ISO 15924

Related topics|

* Anomalies
* ConScript Unicode Registry
* Ideographic Research Group
* International Components for Unicode
* People involved with Unicode
* Han unification

Scripts and symbols in Unicode

Common and
inherited scripts|

* Combining marks
* Diacritics
* Punctuation marks
* Spaces
* Numbers

Modern scripts|

* Adlam
* Arabic
* Armenian
* Balinese
* Bamum
* Batak
* Bengali
* Bopomofo
* Braille
* Buhid
* Burmese
* Canadian Aboriginal
* Chakma
* Cham
* Cherokee
* CJK Unified Ideographs (Han)
* Cyrillic
* Deseret
* Devanagari
* Garay
* Geʽez
* Georgian
* Greek
* Gujarati
* Gunjala Gondi
* Gurmukhi
* Gurung Khema
* Hangul
* Hanifi Rohingya
* Hanja
* Hanunuoo
* Hebrew
* Hiragana
* Javanese
* Kanji
* Kannada
* Katakana
* Kayah Li
* Khmer
* Kirat Rai
* Lao
* Latin
* Lepcha
* Limbu
* Lisu (Fraser)
* Lontara
* Malayalam
* Masaram Gondi
* Mende Kikakui
* Medefaidrin
* Miao (Pollard)
* Mongolian
* Mru
* N'Ko
* Nag Mundari
* New Tai Lue
* Nüshu
* Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong
* Odia
* Ol Chiki
* Ol Onal
* Osage
* Osmanya
* Pahawh Hmong
* Pau Cin Hau
* Pracalit (Newa)
* Ranjana
* Rejang
* Samaritan
* Saurashtra
* Shavian
* Sinhala
* Sorang Sompeng
* Sundanese
* Sunuwar
* Syriac
* Tagbanwa
* Tai Le
* Tai Tham
* Tai Viet
* Tamil
* Tangsa
* Telugu
* Thaana
* Thai
* Tibetan
* Tifinagh
* Tirhuta
* Toto
* Vai
* Wancho
* Warang Citi
* Yi

Ancient and
historic scripts|

* Ahom
* Anatolian hieroglyphs
* Ancient North Arabian
* Avestan
* Bassa Vah
* Bhaiksuki
* Brāhmī
* Carian
* Caucasian Albanian
* Coptic
* Cuneiform
* Cypriot
* Cypro-Minoan
* Dives Akuru
* Dogra
* Egyptian hieroglyphs
* Elbasan
* Elymaic
* Glagolitic
* Gothic
* Grantha
* Hatran
* Imperial Aramaic
* Inscriptional Pahlavi
* Inscriptional Parthian
* Kaithi
* Kawi
* Kharosthi
* Khitan small script
* Khojki
* Khudawadi
* Khwarezmian (Chorasmian)
* Linear A
* Linear B
* Lycian
* Lydian
* Mahajani
* Makasar
* Mandaic
* Manichaean
* Marchen
* Meetei Mayek
* Meroitic
* Modi
* Multani
* Nabataean
* Nandinagari
* Ogham
* Old Hungarian
* Old Italic
* Old Permic
* Old Persian cuneiform
* Old Sogdian
* Old Turkic
* Old Uyghur
* Palmyrene
* ʼPhags-pa
* Phoenician
* Psalter Pahlavi
* Runic
* Sharada
* Siddham
* Sogdian
* South Arabian
* Soyombo
* Sylheti Nagri
* Tagalog (Baybayin)
* Takri
* Tangut
* Todhri
* Tulu Tigalari
* Ugaritic
* Vithkuqi
* Yezidi
* Zanabazar Square

Notational scripts|

* Duployan
* SignWriting

Symbols, emojis|

* Cultural, political, and religious symbols
* Currency
* Control Pictures
* Mathematical operators and symbols
* Glossary
* Phonetic symbols (including IPA)
* Emoji

* Category: Unicode
* Category: Unicode blocks

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