How to type Cancer
To type Cancer (♋), press Alt + 9803 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+264B directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 264b on Linux, or 264b then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Cancer
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+264B
- Windows
- Alt + 9803 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9803 | 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+264B | CANCER |
Symbols related to Cancer
These are filed under horoscope in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other symbols
♋ lives in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600-U+26FF), weather, astrology, religion, games and a wide miscellany. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What Cancer is used for
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ♋ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are crab, horoscope and zodiac. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Cancer is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Cancer
The code chart points from ♋ to crab (U+1F980). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Cancer looks nearly right but not quite.
How Cancer behaves in software
♋ takes two columns in a terminal, the same as a CJK character, so a table padded with spaces to a fixed width will not line up unless whatever is drawing it counts display width rather than characters. 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.
Every way to write Cancer
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+264B |
| Decimal | 9803 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 99 8B |
| UTF-16 bytes | 26 4B |
| HTML entity | ♋ |
| HTML numeric | ♋ or ♋ |
| CSS | \264B |
| JavaScript | \u264B |
| Python | \u264B |
| URL-encoded | %E2%99%8B |
| SVG | 264B.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ♋ looks different on someone else's screen
♋ is drawn by the colour emoji font on the reader's own device and not by anything this site ships, so it is a different picture on Android, on Windows and on an iPhone, and a printed document usually renders it flat and black. Where you need the flat form deliberately, follow it with the variation selector U+FE0E; U+FE0F asks for the colour one. Neither selector changes what the text says, and both survive copy and paste.