Copy and Paste Symbols
1,164 characters in 29 drawers. Point at one to read its codes below, press it to copy. A wide compartment means the Alt code beside it works.
math
263 9 with a Windows shortcut that workssymbols
167 59 with a Windows shortcut that worksarrows
120 6 with a Windows shortcut that worksdingbats & emojis
77 no Windows shortcuts in this drawergreek letters
72 12 with a Windows shortcut that worksnumbers
65 no Windows shortcuts in this draweraccent letters
63 38 with a Windows shortcut that worksbox drawing
39 no Windows shortcuts in this drawerhearts & music
34 no Windows shortcuts in this drawerasterisks
28 no Windows shortcuts in this drawerstars
26 1 with a Windows shortcut that worksshapes: triangles
24 no Windows shortcuts in this drawerflowers, leaves & trees
22 no Windows shortcuts in this drawershapes: squares
18 no Windows shortcuts in this drawershapes: diamonds
17 no Windows shortcuts in this drawercrosses
15 no Windows shortcuts in this drawersubscripts
15 no Windows shortcuts in this drawerfractions
13 no Windows shortcuts in this drawersuperscripts
13 no Windows shortcuts in this drawercheckmarks
12 1 with a Windows shortcut that worksreligious symbols
11 no Windows shortcuts in this drawershapes: quadrants
11 no Windows shortcuts in this drawercurrency
9 7 with a Windows shortcut that worksdingbats
7 5 with a Windows shortcut that workspunctuation
7 6 with a Windows shortcut that worksshapes: circles/bullets
5 no Windows shortcuts in this drawercards
4 4 with a Windows shortcut that worksshapes: rectangles/parallelograms
4 no Windows shortcuts in this drawershapes: arcs/curves
3 no Windows shortcuts in this drawerEvery character here is a Latin letter with a mark on it, which is why a dead key can reach them all without changing your keyboard. An alphabet that replaces the keyboard instead, Greek or Cyrillic, needs its own layout: the key maps are here.
Most Popular Symbols
Click any symbol to copy it instantly.
How to Use Copy and Paste Symbols
Copy and paste is the most reliable way to insert a special character. Unlike an Alt code, it needs no numeric keypad; unlike a keyboard shortcut, it does not change between operating systems. The character you copy is the exact Unicode codepoint, so it survives being pasted into a document, a spreadsheet, a form field or a message.
Every symbol on this page is a standard Unicode character rather than an image or an icon font. That matters: it stays selectable, searchable and readable by a screen reader wherever it lands, and it will still be the same character years from now.
Why copy and paste instead of an Alt code
Alt codes only work on Windows, and only on a keyboard with a numeric keypad. Most laptops no longer have one. Mac uses a completely different set of Option combinations, and Linux uses a third method again. Copying the character sidesteps all of it.
There is also nothing to memorise. An Alt code is four arbitrary digits per symbol; across the 312 symbols with codes on this site that is more than a thousand digits. Searching by name is faster than recalling that the euro sign is 0128.
The one case where a shortcut still wins is a symbol you type constantly. If you use the same character every day, learn its shortcut on the alt codes page and skip the round trip to the clipboard.
Categories explained
Math (263)
Operators, relations and notation for arithmetic, algebra, calculus, logic and set theory. Includes the signs Word and Excel cannot produce from the keyboard, such as plus-minus, multiplication, division, square root, integral and the inequality relations.
Symbols (167)
General-purpose marks that belong to no narrower group: legal marks, reference marks, typographic and editorial signs, technical and interface characters.
Arrows (120)
Directional arrows for navigation, flow diagrams, documentation and indicating change. Single, double, triple, curved, dashed, barbed and harpoon forms, in all four directions and the diagonals.
Dingbats & Emojis (77)
Ornamental and pictorial characters from the Dingbats block and its neighbours. These render as text rather than as vendor-drawn emoji artwork, so they take the colour and weight of the text around them.
Greek Letters (72)
The Greek alphabet in upper and lower case, plus the variant letterforms. Used constantly in mathematics, physics, engineering and statistics: alpha for significance, pi for the circle constant, sigma for summation, omega for resistance.
Numbers (65)
Numeric forms beyond the ten digits on your keyboard: circled, parenthesised and full-stop numbers, double-struck digits, Roman numerals and other numbering systems used in outlines and lists.
Accent Letters (63)
Latin letters carrying a diacritic: acute, grave, circumflex, tilde, umlaut, ring, caron, ogonek and cedilla. For the full set organised by language, use the accent keyboard.
Box Drawing (39)
Line-drawing characters for building tables, frames and diagrams in plain text. Light, heavy, double and rounded weights, with the corners, junctions and crossings needed to join them.
Hearts & Music (34)
Heart shapes in filled, outlined, rotated and decorated forms, alongside musical notation: notes, rests, clefs, sharps, flats and naturals.
Asterisks (28)
Star-shaped reference marks with varying numbers of points and styles. Used for footnotes, wildcards, required form fields and separators.
Stars (26)
Star characters from three points to sixteen, in filled, outlined and shadowed forms, plus pentagrams and compass stars. The staples of ratings and decorative headings.
Shapes: Triangles (24)
Triangles in every orientation and fill: pointing up, down, left and right, filled, outlined and half-filled. Frequently used as play buttons, expand controls and sort indicators.
Flowers, Leaves & Trees (22)
Botanical characters including florettes, shamrocks, snowflakes, and the leaf and tree forms, useful as ornaments and section dividers.
Shapes: Squares (18)
Squares and rectangles in filled, outlined, rounded, shaded and half-filled forms, in a range of sizes. Common as bullets, checkbox stand-ins and status indicators.
Shapes: Diamonds (17)
Diamonds and lozenges, filled and outlined, upright and rotated. Used as bullets, list markers and decorative separators.
Crosses (15)
Cross and X forms: multiplication crosses, saltires, Maltese and other heraldic crosses, and the ballot X used to mark rejection or closure.
Subscripts (15)
Subscript digits, the plus and minus signs, parentheses and a set of lowercase letters. For chemical formulae and mathematical indices when real subscript formatting is unavailable.
Fractions (13)
Precomposed vulgar fractions, from halves and quarters through thirds, fifths, sixths and eighths. A single character each, so they stay aligned in plain text.
Superscripts (13)
Superscript digits, signs, parentheses and letters. For exponents, footnote markers, ordinals and units such as square metres, where formatting is not available.
Checkmarks (12)
Ticks and check characters in light, heavy, italic and boxed forms, plus checked and unchecked ballot boxes for lists and forms.
Religious Symbols (11)
Symbols of the major faiths, including crosses, the star and crescent, the Star of David, the wheel of dharma, the yin-yang and the om.
Shapes: Quadrants (11)
Quadrant and block characters that fill a portion of the character cell. The building blocks for bar charts, progress indicators and mosaic art in a terminal.
Currency (9)
Currency signs for the world's major and minor units, from dollar, euro, pound and yen through rupee, ruble, won, naira and the bitcoin sign.
Dingbats (7)
Additional ornamental characters from the Dingbats block: scissors, pencils, telephones, pointing hands and the classic printer's ornaments.
Punctuation (7)
Punctuation beyond the keyboard: en and em dashes, curly quotes, guillemets, the ellipsis, dagger and double dagger, pilcrow, section sign and interrobang.
Shapes: Circles/Bullets (5)
Circles and bullet forms, filled, outlined and partially filled, at several sizes. The standard list markers and state indicators.
Cards (4)
The four playing-card suits, spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs, in both filled and outlined forms.
Shapes: Rectangles/Parallelograms (4)
Rectangles and parallelograms, filled and outlined. Used in flowcharts and as wide bullets or separators.
Shapes: Arcs/Curves (3)
Arcs, curved segments and partial circles, useful as connectors and decorative elements in diagrams.
Where these symbols are used
Symbols that are not what they look like
Several characters here have near-twins that are easy to confuse and behave differently. The minus sign is not the hyphen: it is a different width and aligns with the plus sign. The multiplication sign is not a lowercase x. The prime and double prime used for feet and inches are not the apostrophe and quotation mark, though almost everyone types them that way.
The distinction matters wherever text is compared, sorted or searched rather than only read. A part number written with a hyphen will not match one written with a minus sign, and a spreadsheet will treat one of them as text.
The same applies to spaces. A non-breaking space stops a line breaking between a number and its unit; an en space and an em space are fixed widths that do not collapse. They are invisible, so they are worth copying deliberately rather than guessing.
Unicode reference
Every character here is defined by the Unicode Standard. These are the primary sources:
- Unicode Character Charts — the official code charts, by block
- The Unicode Standard — the specification itself
- Unicode Character Search — look up any codepoint and its encodings
- List of Unicode Characters — a readable overview of the blocks
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I copy a symbol from this page?
Click it. The character goes straight to your clipboard and the button confirms the copy. Paste it with Ctrl+V on Windows or Linux, or Cmd+V on Mac. If your browser blocks clipboard access, a box opens with the character selected so you can copy it manually.
Will these symbols work everywhere?
In almost everything. These are Unicode characters, which are supported by Word, Google Docs, Excel, every mainstream browser, email clients, and messaging apps. What varies is whether a particular font contains a glyph for a given character. If a font is missing one, you see an empty rectangle rather than the wrong character, and switching font fixes it.
Do they work on a phone?
Yes, and the method is the same. Tap a symbol to copy it, then long-press any text field and choose Paste. This works on both iOS and Android, and no keyboard app or install is needed.
Why does the same symbol look different on different devices?
Because a font decides how a character is drawn. The underlying codepoint is identical, so the meaning and any search or sort behaviour is identical, but a designer at Apple and a designer at Microsoft drew that codepoint differently. Decorative characters vary most; letters and operators barely at all.
How do I find a specific symbol?
Type into the search box: it matches the Unicode name, our own keywords, and the Alt code. Searching "arrow" returns every arrow, "heart" every heart, and "0169" the copyright sign. The category tabs narrow the grid without typing anything.
Are these symbols free to use?
Yes. Unicode characters are not copyrightable and carry no licence. They are as free to use as the letter A, in personal, commercial and educational work alike.
What is the difference between a symbol and an emoji?
Emoji are also Unicode characters, but they are defined to render in colour and are drawn differently by each vendor. The characters here are text symbols: they take the colour and weight of surrounding text, they work in monospace, and they print the same way they display.
Why does a symbol turn into a question mark when I paste it?
That is an encoding problem, not a font problem. Something in the chain is not using UTF-8, usually an older system or a database column with a legacy character set. The fix is upstream: set the encoding to UTF-8 rather than substituting a different character.
Related Tools
1,164 symbols. 341 Windows alt codes. 424 accented characters. 102 characters are drawn by your own system emoji font.
Nothing in this case ever moves. Coordinates are frozen: new characters are appended to the end of a drawer, never inserted. Search dims, it does not reorder. This page runs with the network off.