Skin Tone Variants
About Nail Polish
Nail Polish is the Unicode character ð
at codepoint U+1F485 in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP).
Reference
A hand-prop character, which is what makes it tonable. U+1F485 sits in Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, dates from Unicode 6.0, has general category So and carries Emoji_Presentation. Because the glyph shows a hand it is one of the standard's 134 Emoji_Modifier_Base characters, so five skin-tone sequences are defined for it and its line break class is EB rather than the usual ID. Its chart entry carries two formal aliases, manicure and nail care. Unicode's test data files it under hand-prop, a subgroup of eighteen fully qualified entries that is really three characters â the writing hand, the selfie and this â each with a plain form and five toned ones.
Typical uses
- Manicure and cosmetics contexts, which the aliases name
- Attitude and nonchalance, which CLDR's keywords bored, done and whatever record
- With a skin tone, which is the ordinary way to write it
At a glance
- U+1F485, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs; Unicode 6.0; general category So
- Emoji version E0.6; Emoji_Presentation, so no U+FE0F is needed
- Emoji_Modifier_Base: five skin-tone sequences defined; line break class EB
- Formal aliases in the chart: manicure, nail care
- No HTML named entity. Write 💅 or 💅
Historical Notes
Origins
How the gesture came to mean what it now means is a matter of usage rather than of encoding, and it is one of the few emoji whose acquired reading is documented in general reference works rather than only in commentary.
Unicode
Added in Unicode 6.0, published in 2010, as emoji version E0.6. The skin-tone modifiers came later, at emoji version E1.0, which is why the five toned sequences carry a different version number from the base character.
An attitude recorded in a keyword list
CLDR's nine keywords for this character are bored, care, cosmetics, done, makeup, manicure, nail, polish and whatever. Three of those â bored, done, whatever â describe a stance rather than an activity, which is unusual in a file that mostly lists synonyms for objects. An encyclopaedia article on emoji makes the same observation from the outside: it cites this character as its example of ambiguity allowing culture-specific meanings, quoting descriptions of it as signifying non-caring fabulousness and anything from shutting haters down to a sense of accomplishment. Two independent sources, the same reading, neither of them the code chart.
Developer Notes
| Unicode Codepoint | |
| Decimal | |
| UTF-8 (hex) | |
| UTF-16 (hex) | |
| HEX Entity | |
| HTML Entity | |
| CSS (\xxxx) | |
| JavaScript | |
| Python |
How to Use Nail Polish
To use the Nail Polish symbol (ð
) in HTML, insert the
entity 💅 directly into your markup. The decimal entity 💅 works in any HTML-serialised document.
In CSS pseudo-elements use content: '\1F485';.
In JavaScript and TypeScript the escape '\u{1F485}' evaluates to ð
. In Python source, write '\U0001F485'.
The character encodes to F0 9F 92 85 as UTF-8 bytes and D83D DC85 as UTF-16 code units. Its decimal codepoint is 128133.
This is a fully-qualified emoji and should render with colour on iOS, Android, Windows and macOS. Appearance may vary between platforms, but the underlying codepoint is identical everywhere.
Things to know
- Emoji_Modifier_Base. Appending U+1F3FB to U+1F3FF produces a single toned grapheme of two codepoints.
- Line break class EB, the class reserved for modifier bases, rather than the ID most pictographs carry.
- Without a modifier it renders in whatever default the font uses, which is one presentation among six rather than a neutral one.
- Outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, so a surrogate pair D83D DC85 in UTF-16 and four UTF-16 units once a tone is added.
- Not a variation-sequence base. East Asian Width Wide.
- No named HTML entity. Write 💅 or 💅.
In the Wild
CLDR's two annotation files carry the character definitionally â two entries for the base character and ten defining its five toned forms â and it sits in code charts and skin-tone demonstration tables besides.
The exception is the interesting one. An encyclopaedia article on emoji uses the character once, in a sentence citing it as the example of a glyph that has taken on culture-specific meanings not present in the original, and quoting two published descriptions of what it now signifies. That is a reference work documenting the character's drift rather than performing it.
An encyclopaedia article on the product itself contains none of it. Pages change; this is what those showed on the day.
FAQ
How many skin tones does it have?
Five modifier sequences are defined, plus the unmodified form â six presentations in all.
Why is its line-break class different?
Because it is a modifier base. The standard gives those class EB so a line breaker keeps the base and its modifier together.
Does the lipstick take a tone as well?
No. Lipstick shows a tube rather than a hand, so there is nothing for a skin-tone modifier to colour.
Is there an HTML entity?
No named one. Write 💅 or 💅.