How to type There Exists
To type There Exists (∃), press Alt + 8707 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+2203 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2203 on Linux, or 2203 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
There Exists
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2203
- Windows
- Alt + 8707 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 8707 | 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+2203 | THERE EXISTS |
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.
How to type ∃ on a phone
On a phone, neither iOS nor Android has a codepoint route. Copy ∃ from this page once, then add it as a text replacement (Settings, General, Keyboard on iOS) so a short abbreviation expands to it from then on.
What There Exists is used for
In mathematical notation ∃ is an ordinary symbol: it carries no special spacing and sits in an expression the way a letter does, standing for a thing rather than doing something to the things around it. That is the classification unicode-math gives it, and it is what decides how the symbol is set: $\exists$ in LaTeX, in maths mode rather than in a sentence.
What Unicode says about There Exists
The standard recognises ∃ under another name as well: existential quantifier. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
How There Exists 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 There Exists
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2203 |
| Decimal | 8707 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 88 83 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 22 03 |
| HTML entity | ∃ |
| HTML numeric | ∃ or ∃ |
| CSS | \2203 |
| JavaScript | \u2203 |
| Python | \u2203 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%88%83 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\exists$ |
| SVG | 2203.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 83 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+2203, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.