Typographical symbols and punctuation marks are marks and symbols used in typography with a variety of purposes such as to help with legibility and accessibility, or to identify special cases. This list gives those most commonly encountered with Latin script. For a far more comprehensive list of symbols and signs, see List of Unicode characters. For other languages and symbol sets (especially in mathematics and science), see below
In this table,
Symbol | Name of the symbol [lower-alpha 1] | Similar glyphs or concepts | See also |
---|---|---|---|
◌́ | Acute (accent) | Apostrophe, Grave, Circumflex | |
❦ ❧ | Aldus leaf | Dingbat, Dinkus, Hedera, Index | Fleuron |
≈ | Almost equal to | Tilde, Double hyphen | Approximation, Glossary of mathematical symbols, Double tilde |
& | Ampersand | plus sign | Ligature (writing) |
⟨ ⟩ | Angle brackets | Bracket, Parenthesis, Greater-than sign, Less-than sign, Guillemet | Bracket |
' ’ | Apostrophe | Quotation mark, Guillemet, Prime, Grave | Quotation marks in English, Possessive |
* | Asterisk | Asterism, Dagger | Footnote |
⁂ | Asterism | Dinkus, Therefore sign | |
@ | At sign | ||
\ | Backslash | Slash, Solidus (/) | |
` | Backtick (non-Unicode name) | ('Backtick' is an alias for the grave accent symbol) | |
‱ | Basis point (per ten thousand) | Per cent, per mille (per 1,000) | |
∵ | Because sign | Therefore sign | |
[ ] { } | Brackets | Angle bracket, Parenthesis | |
• | Bullet | Interpunct | |
‸ ⁁ ⎀ | Caret (proofreading) | Caret (computing) (^) | |
⟨ ⟩ | Chevron (non-Unicode name) | Caret, Circumflex, Guillemet, Hacek, Glossary of mathematical symbols | |
^ | Circumflex (symbol) | Caret (The freestanding circumflex symbol is known as a caret in computing and mathematics) | Circumflex (diacritic), Caret (computing), Hat operator |
◌̂ | Circumflex (diacritic) | Grave, Tilde | Combining Diacritical Marks, Diacritic |
: | Colon | Semicolon | |
, | Comma | Cedilla, Decimal separator | |
⁒ | Commercial minus sign | Minus sign, Division sign, Per cent, Obelus | |
🄯, (ɔ) | Copyleft sign | Copyright sign | |
© | Copyright sign | Sound recording copyright | Circled latin capital letter C |
¤ | Currency sign | Square lozenge ("Pillow") | various Currency symbols |
† ‡ | Dagger | Obelus | Footnotes, Latin cross |
– — (and more) | Dash | Hyphen, Hyphen-minus, minus sign | Em dash, En dash |
° | Degree sign | Masculine ordinal indicator | |
* * * | Dinkus | Asterism, Fleuron, Dingbat | |
(many) | Dingbat | Dinkus, Fleuron | |
⌀ | Diameter | Ø (Scandinavian orthography), Slashed zero; empty set | |
" | Ditto mark | Quotation mark | |
÷ | Division sign | Slash (Solidus) (/), Obelus | |
◌ | Dotted circle (Used as a generic placeholder when describing diacritics) | Combining Diacritical Marks | |
⹀ ⸗ | Double hyphen | Almost equal to | |
… | Ellipsis | ||
= | Equals sign | ||
℮ | Estimated sign | ||
! | Exclamation mark | Inverted exclamation mark, Interrobang | |
ª | Feminine ordinal indicator | Masculine ordinal indicator, Degree sign | |
(many) | Fleuron | Dinkus, Dingbat | |
❦ ❧ | Floral heart | Dingbat, Dinkus, Hedera, Index | Fleuron |
. | Full stop | Interpunct, Period | Decimal separator |
♀ ♂ ⚥ | Gender symbol | LGBT symbols | |
` | Grave (symbol) | Quotation mark#Typewriters and early computers | |
◌̀ | Grave (diacrictic) | Acute, Circumflex, Tilde | Combining Diacritical Marks, Diacritic |
> | Greater-than sign | Angle bracket | |
« » | Guillemet | Angle brackets, quotation marks | Much greater than |
❦ ❧ | Hedera | Dingbat, Dinkus, Index, Pilcrow | Fleuron |
‐ | Hyphen | Dash, Hyphen-minus | |
- | Hyphen-minus | Dash, Hyphen, Minus sign | |
☞ | Index | Manicule, Obelus (medieval usage) | |
· | Interpunct | Full-stop, Period, | Decimal separator |
‽ | Interrobang (combined 'Question mark' and 'Exclamation mark') | Inverted question and exclamation marks | |
¡ | Inverted exclamation mark | Exclamation mark, Interrobang | |
¿ | Inverted question mark | Question mark, Interrobang | |
< | Less-than sign | Angle bracket, Chevron, Guillemet | |
◊ | Lozenge | Square lozenge ("Pillow") | |
☞ | Manicule | Index, Obelus | |
º | Masculine ordinal indicator | Feminine ordinal indicator, Degree sign | |
− | Minus sign | Hyphen-minus, Commercial minus | |
× | Multiplication sign | X mark | |
# | Number sign | Numero sign. Also known as "octothorpe" and "hash" | Pound sign |
№ | Numero sign | Number sign | |
Obelus | Division sign, Dagger, Commercial minus, Index | ||
( ) | Parenthesis | Bracket, Angle bracket | |
% | Percent sign | Per mille (per 1,000), Basis point (per 10,000) | |
‰ | Per mille | Percent, Basis point | |
. | Period | The end of a sentence. | |
¶ | Pilcrow | Paragraph mark, paragraph sign, paraph, alinea, or blind P | Section sign ('Silcrow') |
⌑ | Pillow (non-Unicode name) | 'Pillow' is an informal nick-name for the 'Square lozenge' in the travel industry. The generic currency sign is superficially similar | |
| | Pipe (non-Unicode name) | (Unicode name is "vertical bar") | |
+ | Plus sign | minus sign, ampersand | |
± | Plus–minus sign ('plus or minus') | Approximately equal to | |
′ ″ ‴ | Prime (symbol) | Apostrophe, quotation marks | foot (unit), Inch, Minute, Second |
? | Question mark | Inverted question mark, Interrobang | |
“ ” " " ‘ ’ ' ' | Quotation marks | Apostrophe, Ditto, Guillemets, Prime | Inch, Second |
® | Registered trademark symbol | Trademark symbol | |
¤ | Scarab (non-Unicode name) | ('Scarab' is an informal name for the generic currency sign) | |
§ | Section sign | section symbol, section mark, double-s, 'silcrow' | Pilcrow |
; | Semicolon | Colon | |
℠ | Service mark symbol | Trademark symbol | |
/ (and more) | Slash (non-Unicode name) | Division sign, Backslash | also known as "stroke" |
/ | Solidus (the most common of the slash symbols) | Division sign | Called "slant" in ASCII |
℗ | Sound recording copyright symbol | Copyright sign | |
⌑ | Square lozenge | Currency sign | |
∴ | Therefore sign | Asterism, Because | |
⁀ | Tie | ||
~ | Tilde (symbol) | Tilde (diacritic) Wave dash Double tilde | |
◌̃ | Tilde (diacritic) | Circumflex, Grave | Combining Diacritical Marks, Diacritic |
™ | Trademark symbol | Registered trade mark | |
_ | Underscore | ||
| | Vertical bar | also known as a 'pipe' | |
/ | Virgule | Slash | Virgule (disambiguation) |
The comma, is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical. Other fonts give it the appearance of a miniature filled-in figure 9 on the baseline.
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their names, that vary between British and American English. "Brackets", without further qualification, are in British English the (…) marks and in American English the […] marks.
The question mark? is a punctuation mark that indicates a question or interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
An interpunct⟨·⟩, also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. It appears in a variety of uses in some modern languages and is present in Unicode as U+00B7·MIDDLE DOT.
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the Han characters of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a feature shared in common by written Chinese (hanzi), Japanese (kanji), Korean (hanja) and Vietnamese.
The numero sign or numero symbol, №, (also represented as Nº, No̱, No. or no.), is a typographic abbreviation of the word number(s) indicating ordinal numeration, especially in names and titles. For example, using the numero sign, the written long-form of the address "Number 22 Acacia Avenue" is shortened to "№ 22 Acacia Ave", yet both forms are spoken long.
The degree symbol or degree sign, °, is a glyph or symbol that is used, among other things, to represent degrees of arc, hours, degrees of temperature or alcohol proof. The symbol consists of a small superscript circle.
The Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange or CCCII is a character set developed by the Chinese Character Analysis Group in Taiwan. It was first published in 1980, and significantly expanded in 1982 and 1987.
The infinity symbol is a mathematical symbol representing the concept of infinity. This symbol is also called a lemniscate, after the lemniscate curves of a similar shape studied in algebraic geometry, or "lazy eight", in the terminology of livestock branding.
Several 8-bit character sets (encodings) were designed for binary representation of common Western European languages, which use the Latin alphabet, a few additional letters and ones with precomposed diacritics, some punctuation, and various symbols. These character sets also happen to support many other languages such as Malay, Swahili, and Classical Latin.
In Unicode, a script is a collection of letters and other written signs used to represent textual information in one or more writing systems. Some scripts support one and only one writing system and language, for example, Armenian. Other scripts support many different writing systems; for example, the Latin script supports English, French, German, Italian, Vietnamese, Latin itself, and several other languages. Some languages make use of multiple alternate writing systems and thus also use several scripts; for example, in Turkish, the Arabic script was used before the 20th century but transitioned to Latin in the early part of the 20th century. More or less complementary to scripts are symbols and Unicode control characters.
A subscript or superscript is a character that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, while superscripts are above. Subscripts and superscripts are perhaps most often used in formulas, mathematical expressions, and specifications of chemical compounds and isotopes, but have many other uses as well.
The Latin-1 Supplement is the second Unicode block in the Unicode standard. It encodes the upper range of ISO 8859-1: 80 (U+0080) - FF (U+00FF). C1 Controls (0080–009F) are not graphic. This block ranges from U+0080 to U+00FF, contains 128 characters and includes the C1 controls, Latin-1 punctuation and symbols, 30 pairs of majuscule and minuscule accented Latin characters and 2 mathematical operators.
Hebrew punctuation is similar to that of English and other Western languages, Modern Hebrew having imported additional punctuation marks from these languages in order to avoid the ambiguities sometimes occasioned by the relative lack of such symbols in Biblical Hebrew.
The Unicode Standard assigns various properties to each Unicode character and code point.
The PostScript Standard Encoding is one of the character sets used by Adobe Systems' PostScript (PS) since 1984. In 1995, IBM assigned code page 1276 to this character set. NeXT based the character set for its NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP operating systems on this one.
An obelus is a term in codicology and latterly in typography that refers to a historical annotation mark which has resolved to three modern meanings: