Playing Cards (Unicode block)

Last updated
Playing Cards
RangeU+1F0A0..U+1F0FF
(96 code points)
Plane SMP
Scripts Common
Symbol setsPlaying cards symbols
Assigned82 code points
Unused14 reserved code points
Unicode version history
6.0 (2010)59 (+59)
7.0 (2014)82 (+23)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [1] [2]

The Unicode block Playing Cards contains a full 56-card deck for the Minor Arcana (i.e. a standard 52-card deck with King, Queen and Jack picture court cards, and a Knight in all four suits) three jokers, 21 trump card images of the Major Arcana, and a backside.

Contents

Unification

Unicode unifies several ranks that may be considered different by some players:

It also unifies the various suits, using the English names for the French pattern:

Proposals to disunify mundane playing cards from esoteric, arcane tarot cards have been rejected in 2011.

Chart

Playing Cards [1] [2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
 0123456789ABCDEF
U+1F0Ax🂠🂡🂢🂣🂤🂥🂦🂧🂨🂩🂪🂫🂬🂭🂮
U+1F0Bx🂱🂲🂳🂴🂵🂶🂷🂸🂹🂺🂻🂼🂽🂾🂿
U+1F0Cx🃁🃂🃃🃄🃅🃆🃇🃈🃉🃊🃋🃌🃍🃎 🃏
U+1F0Dx🃑🃒🃓🃔🃕🃖🃗🃘🃙🃚🃛🃜🃝🃞🃟
U+1F0Ex🃠🃡🃢🃣🃤🃥🃦🃧🃨🃩🃪🃫🃬🃭🃮🃯
U+1F0Fx🃰🃱🃲🃳🃴🃵
Notes
1. ^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2. ^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Emoji

The Playing Cards block contains one emoji: U+1F0CF🃏PLAYING CARD BLACK JOKER. [3] [4]

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Playing Cards block:

Version Final code points [lower-alpha 1] Count L2  ID WG2  IDDocument
6.0U+1F0A0..1F0AE, 1F0B1..1F0BE, 1F0C1..1F0CF, 1F0D1..1F0DF [lower-alpha 2] 59 L2/04-163 N2760 Everson, Michael (2004-05-18), Proposal to encode dominoes and other game symbols in the UCS
L2/06-288 Pentzlin, Karl (2006-08-06), Comments on L2/04-163 - Domino tiles and other game symbols
L2/09-025R2 N3582 [lower-alpha 3] Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2009-03-05), Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols
L2/09-026R N3583 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2009-02-06), Emoji Symbols Proposed for New Encoding
L2/09-027R2 N3681 Scherer, Markus (2009-09-17), Emoji Symbols: Background Data
L2/09-114 N3607 Towards an encoding of symbol characters used as emoji, 2009-04-06
L2/10-089 N3777 KDDI Input on Emoji, 2010-03-08
L2/10-132 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2010-04-27), Emoji Symbols: Background Data
7.0U+1F0BF, 1F0E0..1F0F523 L2/11-095 N4012 Everson, Michael; Pentzlin, Karl (2011-04-01), Proposal to encode additional playing card characters in the UCS
L2/11-102 (pdf, txt)Davis, Mark (2011-04-06), Clarification of Tarot cards
L2/11-216 N4089 Everson, Michael; Pentzlin, Karl (2011-05-31), Proposal to disunify playing card and tarot card characters in the UCS
L2/11-261R2 Moore, Lisa (2011-08-16), "Motion 128-M2", UTC #128 / L2 #225 Minutes
N4253 (pdf, doc)"M59.12", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 59, 2012-09-12
  1. Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names
  2. Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block for additional emoji-related documents
  3. Japanese translation of N3582 is available as N3621

Related Research Articles

Geometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at code point range U+25A0–25FF.

Letterlike Symbols is a Unicode block containing 80 characters which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters. In addition to this block, Unicode includes full styled mathematical alphabets, although Unicode does not explicitly categorize these characters as being "letterlike."

Miscellaneous Technical is 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. For example:

Supplemental Arrows-B is a Unicode block containing miscellaneous arrows, arrow tails, crossing arrows used in knot descriptions, curved arrows, and harpoons.

Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows is a Unicode block containing arrows and geometric shapes with various fills, astrological symbols, technical symbols, intonation marks, and others.

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.

Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of typographical symbols of an alphanumeric within a circle, a bracket or other not-closed enclosure, or ending in a full stop.

CJK Symbols and Punctuation is a Unicode block containing symbols and punctuation used for writing the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. It also contains one Chinese character.

Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement is a Unicode block consisting of Latin alphabet characters and Arabic numerals enclosed in circles, ovals or boxes, used for a variety of purposes. It is encoded in the range U+1F100–U+1F1FF in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane.

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the handling of fonts and symbols. Within it is a set of images depicting playing cards, and another depicting the French card suits.

Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally from the Wingdings and Webdings fonts found in Microsoft Windows.

Enclosed CJK Letters and Months is a Unicode block containing circled and parenthesized Katakana, Hangul, and CJK ideographs. Also included in the block are miscellaneous glyphs that would more likely fit in CJK Compatibility or Enclosed Alphanumerics: a few unit abbreviations, circled numbers from 21 to 50, and circled multiples of 10 from 10 to 80 enclosed in black squares.

Mahjong Tiles is a Unicode block containing characters depicting the standard set of tiles used in the game of Mahjong.

General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic and novel punctuation such as the interrobang, and invisible mathematical operators.

Dingbats is a Unicode block containing dingbats. Most of its characters were taken from Zapf Dingbats; it was the Unicode block to have imported characters from a specific typeface; Unicode later adopted a policy that excluded symbols with "no demonstrated need or strong desire to exchange in plain text", and thus no further dingbat typefaces were encoded until Webdings and Wingdings were encoded in Version 7.0. Some ornaments are also an emoji, having optional presentation variants.

Arrows is a Unicode block containing line, curve, and semicircle symbols terminating in barbs or arrows.

Enclosed Ideographic Supplement is a Unicode block containing forms of characters and words from Chinese, Japanese and Korean enclosed within or stylised as squares, brackets, or circles. It contains three such characters containing one or more kana, and many containing CJK ideographs. Many of its characters were added for compatibility with the Japanese ARIB STD-B24 standard. Six symbols from Chinese folk religion were added in Unicode version 10.

Transport and Map Symbols is a Unicode block containing transportation and map icons, largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' emoji implementations of Shift JIS, and to encode characters in the Wingdings and Wingdings 2 character sets.

Geometric Shapes Extended is a Unicode block containing Webdings/Wingdings symbols, mostly different weights of squares, crosses, and saltires, and different weights of variously spoked asterisks, stars, and various color squares and circles for emoji.

Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block.

References

  1. "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  2. "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  3. "UTR #51: Unicode Emoji". Unicode Consortium. 2020-02-11.
  4. "UCD: Emoji Data for UTR #51". Unicode Consortium. 2021-08-26.