Blog / Deep Dives
Deep Dives
One character, the long version — where it came from, what it actually means, and the arguments people have had about it.
∕ Division Slash A slash whose only job is division. General category Sm, in Mathematical Operators since Unicode 1.1, East Asian Width Ambiguous, line break class AI — and Bidi_Mirrored, so a right-to-left context…≡ Identical To Three horizontal bars. General category Sm, Mathematical Operators, Unicode 1.1, East Asian Width Ambiguous, line-break class AI, math class R. Two HTML names, ≡ and ≡ — and the…≈ Almost Equal To The double tilde. General category Sm, Mathematical Operators, Unicode 1.1, East Asian Width Ambiguous, line-break class AI, math class R. It has six HTML named entities — ≈, ≈, &asymp…∓ Minus-or-plus Sign The sign that always takes the opposite of whatever plus-minus is doing in the same expression. General category Sm, in Mathematical Operators since Unicode 1.1, and it shares its partner's two…∗ Asterisk Operator The asterisk, centred as an operator. General category Sm, in Mathematical Operators since Unicode 1.1, East Asian Width Narrow, and with no Windows-1252 slot — the difference from the keyboard…✕ Multiplication X A dingbat named after an operation it does not perform. General category So, not Sm — it is in the Dingbats block, encoded in Unicode 1.1 to round-trip a decorative typeface, and the names in that…⸻ Three-em Dash Three ems end to end — long enough that it reads as a rule rather than as punctuation. Its bibliographic use, standing in for a repeated author name, is documented by style manuals rather than by…⸘ Inverted Interrobang The opening form of the interrobang, built on the Spanish convention of bracketing an interrogative or exclamatory span at both ends. Unicode files it as Po in Supplemental Punctuation, encoded in…☞ White Right Pointing Index The pointing hand of the printed margin — a fist with the index finger extended, aimed at the line that matters. U+261E is So in Miscellaneous Symbols, present since Unicode 1.1 (1993), and its chart…⁋ Reversed Pilcrow Sign The pilcrow drawn the other way round. Unicode files it as Po in General Punctuation, encoded in version 3.0, with two cross-references — to the ordinary pilcrow and to the paragraphus mark in…¿ Inverted Question Mark The opening question mark of Spanish, and the character Unicode names with the alias turned question mark. It is Po in the Latin-1 Supplement, encoded in version 1.1 and inherited from ISO 8859-1.…¡ Inverted Exclamation Mark The opening exclamation mark of Spanish, Asturian and Galician. It has no closing partner of its own — the sentence ends on the ordinary exclamation mark — and its sibling is the inverted question…§ Section Sign The mark that names a numbered subdivision, most often a statutory section. Unicode files it as Po in the Latin-1 Supplement, encoded in version 1.1 and inherited from ISO 8859-1, and its own…¶ Pilcrow Sign Paragraph Sign The paragraph mark. Unicode files it as Po in the Latin-1 Supplement, encoded in version 1.1, with the formal alias paragraph sign and a note that some European usage employs it as a section sign —…‱ Per Ten Thousand Sign Parts per ten thousand — one more zero than per mille, and the character that matches the basis point of finance. Unicode files it as Po in General Punctuation with the alias permyriad, and its…⁈ Question Exclamation Mark A question mark and an exclamation mark in that order, packed into one cell for vertical East Asian text. Unicode files it as Po in General Punctuation with the compatibility decomposition 003F 0021…‽ Interrobang Asking a question and shouting it at the same time normally takes two marks — the question mark (?) and the exclamation mark (!), stacked as ?! at the end of the line. One glyph does both jobs: you…👩 Woman The character the emoji standard builds most of its people out of. U+1F469 sits in Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs with general category So, dates from Unicode 6.0, and is Emoji_Modifier_Base…🪽 Wing A single wing, grouped with the birds. U+1FABD sits in Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A, dates from Unicode 15.0, has general category So and carries Emoji_Presentation. Unicode's test data files…🐌 Snail The zodiac's most surprising entry. U+1F40C sits in Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs with general category So, dates from Unicode 6.0, and carries Emoji_Presentation. Its chart annotation reads…✺ Sixteen Pointed Asterisk Sixteen short even rays around a small centre — closer to a sunburst than to a star, and Unicode's chart gives it the alias "starburst", which describes it better than its formal name does. U+273A is…□ White Square A hollow square, and one of the more talkative entries in the standard: Unicode's chart gives it four readings — quadrature, the alchemical symbol for salt, the astrological aspect square, and a…⁺ Superscript Plus Sign The raised plus of ion charges and one-sided limits. Unicode files it as Sm, a mathematical symbol, with bidirectional class ES, European Separator — the class for a sign attached to a number — and…” Right Double Quotation Mark Double Comma Quotation Mark English closes a double quotation with it. Swedish and Finnish open with it too: CLDR gives both locales the same mark at each end, so the character English typography calls a closing quote starts…