How to type Element Of
To type Element Of (∈), press Alt + 8712 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+2208 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2208 on Linux, or 2208 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Element Of
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2208
- Windows
- Alt + 8712 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8712 | 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+2208 | ELEMENT OF |
Symbols related to Element Of
These are filed under contains, of and element in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other math symbols
∈ lives in the Mathematical Operators block (U+2200-U+22FF), the core set of mathematical and logical operators. Within Unicode it is classified as Sm, a mathematical symbol. Software may lay it out with the spacing an operator expects.
What Element Of is used for
In mathematical notation ∈ is a relation: it makes a claim about the two things either side of it, which is true or false rather than a value to work out. TeX gives a relation more space than an operator, and breaks a long line at one in preference to breaking at an operator. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\in$ 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 contains, membership and set. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Element Of is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
How Element Of 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. It is a mirrored character: in right-to-left text it is drawn reversed, so it keeps pointing at what it pointed at.
Every way to write Element Of
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2208 |
| Decimal | 8712 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 88 88 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 22 08 |
| HTML entity | ∈ |
| HTML numeric | ∈ or ∈ |
| CSS | \2208 |
| JavaScript | \u2208 |
| Python | \u2208 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%88%88 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\in$ |
| SVG | 2208.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ∈ arrives as ∈
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 88 88 read as Windows-1252 gives exactly ∈. 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+2208, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.