How to type Double Dagger
To type Double Dagger (‡), press Alt + 0135 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or press Option + Shift + 7 on Mac, or write ‡ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2021 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2021 on Linux, or 2021 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Double Dagger
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2021
- Windows
- Alt + 0135
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 0135 | Hold Alt and type the number on the numeric keypad. |
| Mac | Option + Shift + 7 | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ‡ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2021 | DOUBLE DAGGER |
Other punctuation symbols
‡ lives in the General Punctuation block (U+2000-U+206F), dashes, quotation marks, spaces and reference marks used across languages. Within Unicode it is classified as Po, a punctuation mark.
What Double Dagger is used for
In mathematical notation ‡ is a binary operator: it takes one operand on each side, and TeX sets a medium space either side of it so that the three parts read as a single expression rather than as three symbols in a row. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\ddagger$ 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 they are double dagger sign, obelisk and obelus. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Double Dagger 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 Double Dagger
The standard recognises ‡ under another name as well: diesis, double obelisk. 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 triple dagger (U+2E4B). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Double Dagger looks nearly right but not quite.
How Double Dagger 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.
Every way to write Double Dagger
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2021 |
| Decimal | 8225 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 80 A1 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 20 21 |
| HTML entity | ‡ |
| HTML numeric | ‡ or ‡ |
| CSS | \2021 |
| JavaScript | \u2021 |
| Python | \u2021 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%80%A1 |
| LaTeX, in prose | \ddag |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\ddagger$ |
| SVG | 2021.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ‡ arrives as ‡
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 80 A1 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.