How to type Warning Sign
To type Warning Sign (⚠), press Alt + 9888 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+26A0 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 26a0 on Linux, or 26a0 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Warning Sign
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+26A0
- Windows
- Alt + 9888 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9888 | 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+26A0 | WARNING SIGN |
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 Warning Sign 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 it is caution. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Warning Sign is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Warning Sign
The code chart points from ⚠ to octagonal sign (U+1F6D1). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Warning Sign looks nearly right but not quite.
How Warning Sign 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 Warning Sign
How to insert warning symbol in word?
In Word, type 26a0 and press Alt+X, which converts the codepoint you just typed into ⚠. Insert › Symbol › More Symbols finds it by its Unicode name, WARNING SIGN. Google Docs has no Alt+X, so use Alt + 9888 there, or Insert › Special characters and search the same name.
Every way to write Warning Sign
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+26A0 |
| Decimal | 9888 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 9A A0 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 26 A0 |
| HTML entity | ⚠ |
| HTML numeric | ⚠ or ⚠ |
| CSS | \26A0 |
| JavaScript | \u26A0 |
| Python | \u26A0 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%9A%A0 |
| SVG | 26A0.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ⚠ arrives as âš
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 9A A0 read as Windows-1252 gives exactly âš . 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+26A0, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.