How to type Skull and Crossbones
To type Skull and Crossbones (☠), press Alt + 9760 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+2620 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2620 on Linux, or 2620 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Skull And Crossbones
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2620
- Windows
- Alt + 9760 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9760 | 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+2620 | SKULL AND CROSSBONES |
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 Skull and Crossbones 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 bone, dead, death and face. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Skull and Crossbones 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 Skull and Crossbones
The standard recognises ☠ under another name as well: poison. 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 black skull and crossbones (U+1F571). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Skull and Crossbones looks nearly right but not quite.
How Skull and Crossbones 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.
What people ask about Skull and Crossbones
What is the dotted line face emoji mean?
☠ is SKULL AND CROSSBONES, encoded at U+2620. It is distinct from black skull and crossbones (U+1F571), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
How to type faces with keyboard?
You can press Alt + 9760 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces ☠.
Every way to write Skull and Crossbones
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2620 |
| Decimal | 9760 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 98 A0 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 26 20 |
| HTML entity | ☠ |
| HTML numeric | ☠ or ☠ |
| CSS | \2620 |
| JavaScript | \u2620 |
| Python | \u2620 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%98%A0 |
| SVG | 2620.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ☠ arrives as â˜
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 98 A0 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.