How to type White Circle
To type White Circle (○), press Alt + 9675 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+25CB directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 25cb on Linux, or 25cb then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
White Circle
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+25CB
- Windows
- Alt + 9675 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9675 | 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+25CB | WHITE CIRCLE |
Symbols related to White Circle
Unicode's confusables table, the one registrars use against spoofed domains, lists ° as close enough to be mistaken for it, and the rest are filed under circle in CLDR, the keyword list Unicode publishes alongside the names.
Other symbols
○ lives in the Geometric Shapes block (U+25A0-U+25FF), squares, circles, triangles and diamonds. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What White Circle 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: $\mdlgwhtcircle$ 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 hollow circle and ring. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when White Circle is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What ○ gets confused with
○ has lookalikes that are a different character underneath. Search, sorting and anything that compares strings can tell them apart even where a reader cannot.
° (U+00B0) is the degree ring, which is smaller and sits at the top of the line.
◦ (U+25E6) is the white bullet, a list mark rather than a shape.
● (U+25CF) is the black circle, the filled counterpart of this one.
What Unicode says about White Circle
The code chart points from ○ to combining enclosing circle (U+20DD), large circle (U+25EF), heavy circle (U+2B58), ideographic number zero (U+3007) and full moon symbol (U+1F315). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when White Circle looks nearly right but not quite.
How White Circle 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.
What people ask about White Circle
How to type the little circle for degrees?
You can press Alt + 9675 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces ○.
What is a star inside a circle mean?
○ is WHITE CIRCLE, encoded at U+25CB. It is distinct from combining enclosing circle (U+20DD) and large circle (U+25EF), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
What symbol is a star in a circle?
Unicode calls ○ WHITE CIRCLE, at U+25CB.
Every way to write White Circle
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+25CB |
| Decimal | 9675 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 97 8B |
| UTF-16 bytes | 25 CB |
| HTML entity | ○ |
| HTML numeric | ○ or ○ |
| CSS | \25CB |
| JavaScript | \u25CB |
| Python | \u25CB |
| URL-encoded | %E2%97%8B |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\mdlgwhtcircle$ |
| SVG | 25CB.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ○ arrives as â—‹
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 97 8B read as Windows-1252 gives exactly â—‹. 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+25CB, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.