Unicode Symbols
Encyclopedia
In computing
, in addition to encoding characters for the various writing systems used throughout the World, Unicode
also devotes several blocks of characters to symbols that have a well-defined place in plain text. In Unicode there is a main distinction between "scripts" and "symbols". A character is either part of "script" or of a list of "symbols". Unicode's "Special characters", i.e. with Unicode a specified behaviour like in line-breaking, are also Symbols.
Many of the symbols are drawn from existing character sets or ISO or other national and international standards. As stated in the Unicode Standard 5.0, “The universe of symbols is rich and open-ended.” This makes the issue of what symbols to encode and how symbols should be encoded more complicated than the issues surrounding alphabets, syllabaries, logographies
, and other writing systems. Typically Unicode has sought to encode symbols that have clear roots in national and international standards. Similarly, it focuses on symbols that make sense in a one-dimensional plain text context. For example, Unicode cites the typical two-dimensional arrangement of electronic diagram symbols as the reason for not including those in the characters set . Of course for adequate treatment in plain text, symbols must also be largely monochromatic. Even with these limitations—monochromatic, one-dimensional and standards based—the domain of symbols is potentially limitless. Unicode has primarily focused on writing systems, CJK
ideographs, and numerals. Two recent symbol genre additions are the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (Unicode 3.1) and Yijing Hexagram Symbols (Unicode 4.0).
ranges encode Symbol
s
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
, in addition to encoding characters for the various writing systems used throughout the World, Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
also devotes several blocks of characters to symbols that have a well-defined place in plain text. In Unicode there is a main distinction between "scripts" and "symbols". A character is either part of "script" or of a list of "symbols". Unicode's "Special characters", i.e. with Unicode a specified behaviour like in line-breaking, are also Symbols.
Many of the symbols are drawn from existing character sets or ISO or other national and international standards. As stated in the Unicode Standard 5.0, “The universe of symbols is rich and open-ended.” This makes the issue of what symbols to encode and how symbols should be encoded more complicated than the issues surrounding alphabets, syllabaries, logographies
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
, and other writing systems. Typically Unicode has sought to encode symbols that have clear roots in national and international standards. Similarly, it focuses on symbols that make sense in a one-dimensional plain text context. For example, Unicode cites the typical two-dimensional arrangement of electronic diagram symbols as the reason for not including those in the characters set . Of course for adequate treatment in plain text, symbols must also be largely monochromatic. Even with these limitations—monochromatic, one-dimensional and standards based—the domain of symbols is potentially limitless. Unicode has primarily focused on writing systems, CJK
CJK
CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which is used in the field of software and communications internationalization.The term CJKV means CJK plus Vietnamese, which constitute the main East Asian languages.- Characteristics :...
ideographs, and numerals. Two recent symbol genre additions are the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (Unicode 3.1) and Yijing Hexagram Symbols (Unicode 4.0).
Symbol block list
The following UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
ranges encode Symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
s
- Alphanumeric variants (based on Latin characters in Unicode)
- Superscripts and Subscripts (2070–209F)
- Currency Symbols (20A0–20CF)
- Letterlike SymbolsLetterlike SymbolsLetterlike Symbols are graphemes which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters.In Unicode, Letterlike Symbols are placed in the block U+2100–214F, as in the following table.-See also:*Mapping of Unicode characters...
(2100–214F) - Number FormsNumber FormsNumber Forms are Unicode characters which have specific meaning as numbers, but are constructed from other characters. They consist primarily of vulgar fractions and roman numerals. They are placed in the Unicode codepoint range 0x2150 through 0x218F , except for three fractions in ISO-8859-1...
(2150–218F) - Enclosed Alphanumerics (2460–24FF)
- Phonetic Symbols (including IPA)Unicode Phonetic SymbolsUnicode supports several phonetic scripts and notations through the existing writing systems and the addition of extra blocks with phonetic characters. These phonetic extras are derived of an existing script, usually Latin, Greek or Cyrillic. In Unicode there is no "IPA script"...
)
- ArrowsArrow (symbol)An arrow is a graphical symbol such as → or ←, used to point or indicate direction, being in its simplest form a line segment with a triangle affixed to one end, and in more complex forms a representation of an actual arrow...
- Arrows (2190–21FF)
- Supplemental Arrows-A (27F0–27FF)
- Supplemental Arrows-B (2900–297F)
- Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (2B00–2BFF)
- DingbatDingbatA dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....
arrows (2794–27BF)
- Mathematical
- Mathematical OperatorsUnicode Mathematical OperatorsUnicode ranges mathematical operators and symbols in multiple blocks.* Mathematical Operators * Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A * Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B...
(2200–22FF) - Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-A (27C0–27EF)
- Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B (2980–29FF)
- Supplemental Mathematical Operators (2A00–2AFF)
- Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (1D400–1D7FF)
- Mathematical Operators
- Technical
- Miscellaneous TechnicalMiscellaneous Technical (Unicode)Miscellaneous Technical is the name of a 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....
(2300–23FF) - ControlControl characterIn computing and telecommunication, a control character or non-printing character is a code point in a character set, that does not in itself represent a written symbol.It is in-band signaling in the context of character encoding....
Pictures (2400–243F) - Optical Character RecognitionOptical character recognitionOptical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...
(2440–245F)
- Miscellaneous Technical
- Miscellaneous
- Combining Diacritical MarksCombining characterIn digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks ....
for Symbols (20D0–20FF) - Box DrawingBox drawing charactersBox drawing characters, also known as line drawing characters, or pseudographics, are widely used in text user interfaces to draw various frames and boxes...
(2500–257F) - Block Elements (2580–259F)
- Geometric ShapesUnicode Geometric ShapesGeometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at codepoint range U+25A0-25FF.-U+25A0-U+25CF:-U+25D0-U+25FF:-Font coverage:Only two font sets—Code2000 and the DejaVu family—include coverage for each of the glyphs in the Geometric Shapes range, Unifont also contains all the glyphs...
(25A0–25FF) - Miscellaneous SymbolsMiscellaneous SymbolsThe Miscellaneous Symbols Unicode block contains various glyphs representing things from a variety of categories: Astrological, Astronomical, Chess, Dice, Ideological symbols, Musical notation, Political symbols, Recycling, Religious symbols, Trigrams, Warning signs and Weather.-Tables:Note: These...
(2600–26FF) - DingbatDingbatA dingbat is an ornament, character or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament" or "printer's character"....
s (2700–27BF) - Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (2B00–2BFF)
- Combining Diacritical Marks
External links
- Unicode character code charts
- Draft Unicode Technical Report #25: Unicode Support for Mathematics
- decodeunicode.org Unicode-Wiki with all 98,884 graphical Unicode 5.0 characters as GIFGIFThe Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
images in three sizes. Including full text search. English/German