How to type Black Square
To type Black Square (■), press Alt + 9632 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ■ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+25A0 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 25a0 on Linux, or 25a0 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Black Square
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+25A0
- Windows
- Alt + 9632 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9632 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ■ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+25A0 | BLACK SQUARE |
Other symbols
■ lives in the Geometric Shapes block (U+25A0-U+25FF), squares, circles, triangles and diamonds. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
How to type ■ in Microsoft Word
In Microsoft Word, type 25a0 and press Alt + X. Word reads the four characters before the cursor as a hex codepoint and replaces them, and pressing Alt + X again turns ■ back into 25a0, which is the quickest way to check what a character really is.
What Black Square is used for
In mathematical notation ■ is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mdlgblksquare$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ■ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and it is filled square. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Black Square is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What ■ gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups ■ with █ (U+2588, Full Block). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If Black Square is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about Black Square
The standard recognises ■ under another name as well: moding mark (in ideographic text). That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
The code chart points from ■ to full block (U+2588) and black large square (U+2B1B). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Black Square looks nearly right but not quite.
How Black Square behaves in software
■ is East Asian Ambiguous: one column in a Western locale and two in a CJK one. That is why a table that lines up on your machine can break on somebody else's, with no change to the text at all. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about Black Square
What does the black square emoji mean?
■ is BLACK SQUARE, encoded at U+25A0. It is distinct from full block (U+2588) and black large square (U+2B1B), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
How to type black square symbol?
You can press Alt + 9632 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces ■.
How to insert a filled square symbol in word?
In Word, type 25a0 and press Alt+X, which converts the codepoint you just typed into ■. Insert › Symbol › More Symbols finds it by its Unicode name, BLACK SQUARE. Google Docs has no Alt+X, so use Alt + 9632 there, or Insert › Special characters and search the same name.
Every way to write Black Square
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+25A0 |
| Decimal | 9632 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 96 A0 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 25 A0 |
| HTML entity | ■ |
| HTML numeric | ■ or ■ |
| CSS | \25A0 |
| JavaScript | \u25A0 |
| Python | \u25A0 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%96%A0 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mdlgblksquare$ |
| SVG | 25A0.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ■ arrives as â–
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 96 A0 read as Windows-1252 gives exactly â– . The text is intact and the damage is in the reading, so setting the reader to UTF-8 restores it and retyping does not. A rectangle instead of the mojibake means the opposite: the encoding is right and the font has no glyph at U+25A0, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.