How to type White Triangle Up
To type White Triangle Up (△), press Alt + 9651 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+25B3 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 25b3 on Linux, or 25b3 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
White Up-Pointing Triangle
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+25B3
- Windows
- Alt + 9651 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9651 | 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+25B3 | WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE |
Symbols related to White Triangle Up
Unicode's confusables table, the one registrars use against spoofed domains, lists Δ as close enough to be mistaken for it, and the rest are filed under up-pointing and triangle 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.
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 White Triangle Up 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: $\bigtriangleup$ 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 it is hollow up-pointing triangle. That word is what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when White Triangle Up is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches it as well as the Unicode name.
What △ gets confused with
Unicode's own confusables table, the one used to catch lookalike domain names, groups △ with Δ (U+0394, Delta). They are separate characters that render close enough to be mistaken for one another, so a search or a string comparison will separate them where your eye will not. If White Triangle Up is not matching where you expect it to, one of these is the usual reason.
What Unicode says about White Triangle Up
The standard recognises △ under another name as well: trine. 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 combining enclosing upward pointing triangle (U+20E4), increment (U+2206), triangle with rounded corners (U+1F6C6) and alchemical symbol for fire (U+1F702). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when White Triangle Up looks nearly right but not quite.
How White Triangle Up 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 Triangle Up
What does the triangle symbol mean in math?
△ is WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE, encoded at U+25B3. It is distinct from combining enclosing upward pointing triangle (U+20E4) and increment (U+2206), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
How to type triangle symbol?
You can press Alt + 9651 on Windows, with Num Lock on and the digits typed on the numeric keypad. That produces △.
Every way to write White Triangle Up
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+25B3 |
| Decimal | 9651 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 96 B3 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 25 B3 |
| HTML entity | △ |
| HTML numeric | △ or △ |
| CSS | \25B3 |
| JavaScript | \u25B3 |
| Python | \u25B3 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%96%B3 |
| LaTeX, in maths mode | $\bigtriangleup$ |
| SVG | 25B3.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If △ arrives as â–³
One character has become three, which is what a three-byte UTF-8 sequence looks like when each byte is read separately: E2 96 B3 read as Windows-1252 gives exactly â–³. 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+25B3, which for a character this far outside Latin-1 is common in older office fonts.