How to type Colon
: is Shift + ;, in the same place on US and UK keyboards. Alt + 58 on the numeric keypad produces it on any Windows layout, which is the way in when the keyboard in front of you has no key for it, and : writes it in HTML. Its codepoint is U+003A.
Colon
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+003A
- Windows
- Alt + 58
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 58 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| HTML | : | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+003A | COLON |
Other punctuation symbols
: lives in the Basic Latin block (U+0000-U+007F), the original ASCII set: the letters, digits and punctuation printed on a US keyboard. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark. Its bidirectional class makes it a common number separator.
What Colon is used for
In mathematical notation : is punctuation: it takes a space after it and none before, the same as a comma in a sentence. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\mathcolon$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
What Unicode says about Colon
Unicode annotates : directly. Against U+003A the code chart carries the note “Also used to denote division or scale; for that mathematical use 2236 is preferred”. It adds: in Finnish and Swedish, also used as intra-word punctation (abbreviation mark). That is the standard saying what the character is for, rather than an inference from its name.
The code chart points from : to modifier letter triangular colon (U+02D0), modifier letter raised colon (U+02F8), armenian full stop (U+0589), hebrew punctuation sof pasuq (U+05C3), ethiopic wordspace (U+1361) and ethiopic colon (U+1365). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Colon looks nearly right but not quite.
How Colon behaves in software
: takes one column in a terminal. 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 Colon
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+003A |
| Decimal | 58 |
| UTF-8 bytes | 3A |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00 3A |
| HTML entity | : |
| HTML numeric | : or : |
| CSS | \003A |
| JavaScript | \u003A |
| Python | \u003A |
| URL-encoded | %3A |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mathcolon$ |
| SVG | 003A.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If : needs escaping
: is one byte in ASCII, in UTF-8 and in every code page in common use, so it never arrives corrupted. Its problem is the opposite one: it means something to the software reading it. In HTML it can be written :, in a URL it is %3A, and inside a CSV field, a shell command or a regular expression it has to be quoted or escaped rather than typed plainly. That is also why : is the character people substitute when the one they wanted will not type.