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Awesome Code Points
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Awesome Code Points

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# Awesome Code Points [![Awesome](https://cdn.rawgit.com/sindresorhus/awesome/d7305f38d29fed78fa85652e3a63e154dd8e8829/media/badge.svg)](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)



This is a curated list of characters in Unicode, that have interesting (and

maybe not widely known) features or are awesome in some other way.



## Table of Contents



1. [Standalone code points](#standalone-code-points)

2. [Code points that affect others](#code-points-that-affect-others)

    1. [Breaking and Gluing other characters](#breaking-and-gluing-other-characters)

3. [Record holders and extremes](#record-holders-and-extremes)

4. [For funsies](#for-funsies)

    1. [Games](#games)

5. [Other Lists of Code Points](#other-lists-of-code-points)

6. [Contributing](#contributing-your-code-points)

7. [License](#license)



## Standalone Code Points



* The code points of the Unicode blocks [Box

    Drawing](https://codepoints.net/box_drawing) (U+2500 to U+257F) and [Block

    Elements](https://codepoints.net/block_elements) (U+2580 to U+259F) cover

    most of your monospace command-line visualization needs.



        ╭───────╮

        │Unicode│

        │rules! │

        ╰┬─────┬╯

* [U+2E2E](https://codepoints.net/U+2E2E) REVERSED QUESTION MARK - the “irony

    mark” to express irony/sarcasm. A useful character⸮

* [U+D800](https://codepoints.net/U+D800) to

    [U+DFFF](https://codepoints.net/U+DFFF) - surrogate code points. They are

    only reserved to ease [UTF-16

    encoding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16).

* [U+FEFF](https://codepoints.net/U+FEFF) ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE - it’s name

    suggests, that it can be used like U+2060 WORD JOINER. And in fact the

    latter was introduced to inherit its semantics. This is because U+FEFF had

    become a special beacon called the [byte order

    mark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark), that was placed on

    the beginning of some UTF-8 files. In complying software (including many

    text editors) this character is stripped from the start of a file and

    handled as metadata. In non-complying software (like the PHP interpreter)

    this leads to all sorts of fun behaviour.

* [U+FFFD](https://codepoints.net/U+FFFD) REPLACEMENT CHARACTER - when a

    character cannot be displayed (e.g., decoding an erroneous UTF-8 sequency),

    this code point steps into the breach.

* [U+1D455](https://codepoints.net/U+1D455) is missing. It would be an italic

    small “h”. It was not encoded, because it would be identical to the Planck

    constant ℎ ([U+210E](https://codepoints.net/U+210E)).

* [U+FF03](https://codepoints.net/U+FF03) FULLWIDTH NUMBER SIGN - it is the 

    "Japanese Hashtag" `＃`. Sites like Twitter accept it as equivalent to the 

    regular `#` ([U+0023](https://codepoints.net/U+0023)).



## Code Points that Affect Others



* [U+202D](https://codepoints.net/U+202D) and

    [U+202E](https://codepoints.net/U+202E) - change the text direction.

    Relevant XKCD:



    [![](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rtl.png )](https://xkcd.com/1137/)

* [U+FE0E](https://codepoints.net/U+FE0E) VARIATION SELECTOR-15 - force

    black-_&_-white emoji. If this code point follows an emoji, an explicit

    monochrome rendering of the emoji is requested (if the client supports it).

* [U+FE0F](https://codepoints.net/U+FE0F) VARIATION SELECTOR-16 - force

    colorful emoji. If this code point follows an emoji, an explicit colorful

    rendering of the emoji is requested (if the client supports it).

* Diacritics and combining marks: There is a [host of

    characters](https://codepoints.net/search?gc=Mn), that add

    to the characters before. Those are called Combining Marks. Unicode

    provides a [handy FAQ](http://unicode.org/faq/char_combmark.html) on the

    details, but in a nutshell: If you add one after a character, it is placed

    on top of that previous one. So, `a + ̊ = å`. This _may_ lead to all kinds

    of funny problems, because for some combinations there are pre-composed

    characters. Our little `å` here can also be encoded as U+00E5. You might

    note, that while this has a length of one character, the combination of `a`

    and combining ring has a length of two characters.



    Of course, one can also do fun things with those characters like

    [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/113195) on StackOverflow.

* The [Regional Indicator Symbols](https://codepoints.net/U+1F1E6..U+1F1FF)

    U+1F1E6 to U+1F1FF resemble the 26 latin characters. They are used to

    create flag emoji. Since the Unicode consortium didn’t feel like getting on

    board with international politics, the solution to flags is to combine

    these 26 characters to the respective ISO code for a country. Examples:



    Country | ISO Code | Code Points       | Emoji (if supported)

    --------|----------|-------------------|---------------------

    USA     | US       | U+1F1FA + U+1F1F8 | 🇺🇸

    Germany | DE       | U+1F1E9 + U+1F1EA | 🇩🇪

    China   | CN       | U+1F1E8 + U+1F1F3 | 🇨🇳

* Skin color of emoji: There are five code points, that control the skin color

    of emoji, [U+1F3FB to U+1F3FF](https://codepoints.net/U+1F3FB..U+1F3FF).

    They are called “Emoji Modifier Fitzpatrick Type” 1 to 6, with 1 the palest

    and 6 the darkest. If one of these characters follows an emoji, that emoji

    is meant to be rendered in the appropriate skin color of [the Fitzpatrick

    scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale). If no such

    modifier is added, the skin tone should be unnatural, e. g., bright yellow.

    Fun fact: Since the Fitzpatrick modifiers are normal code points, emoji

    with such skin colors have the length 2, which Twitter users noticed first.

    Here is a comparison chart [directly from the

    specification](http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-2.html#Diversity):



    Code    | Name                                | Samples

    --------|-------------------------------------|---------

    U+1F3FB | EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-1-2 |  

    U+1F3FC | EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-3   |    

    U+1F3FD | EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-4   |    

    U+1F3FE | EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-5   |    

    U+1F3FF | EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-6   |    



### Breaking and Gluing other characters



* [U+00A0](https://codepoints.net/U+00A0) NO-BREAK SPACE - force adjacent

    characters to stick together. Well known as ` ` in HTML.

* [U+00AD](https://codepoints.net/U+00AD) SOFT HYPHEN - (in HTML: `­`)

    like ZERO WIDTH SPACE, but show a hyphen if (and only if) a break occurs.

* [U+200B](https://codepoints.net/U+200B) ZERO WIDTH SPACE - the inverse to

    U+00A0: create no space, but allow word breaking.

* [U+200D](https://codepoints.net/U+200D) ZERO WIDTH JOINER - force adjacent

    characters to be joined together (e.g., arabic characters or supported

    emoji). Apple uses this to compose some emoji like different families.

* [U+2060](https://codepoints.net/U+2060) WORD JOINER - the same as

    U+00A0, but completely invisible. Good for writing `@font-face` on Twitter.



For better comparison of which code point has which effect, consult this

table:



               | U+00A0 | U+00AD | U+200B | U+200D | U+2060

---------------|--------|--------|--------|--------|--------

create space   |   ✓    |   ✗    |   ✗    |   ✗    |   ✗

allow breaking |   ✗    |   ✓    |   ✓    |   ✗    |   ✗

possible change|   ✗    |   ✓    |   ✗    |   ✓    |   ✗



Smashing Magazine featured [a comprehensive

article](http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/10/space-yourself/) on the

different types of whitespace.



## Record Holders and Extremes



* [U+0000](https://codepoints.net/U+0000) <control> - first code point.

* [U+10FFFF](https://codepoints.net/U+10FFFF) (_non-character_) - last code

    point. The whole rest of its plane apart from U+10FFFE, the code points

    in the 0x10000-0x10FFFD range, are private use characters, guaranteed to

    be never filled by a future Unicode standard.

* [U+1F402](https://codepoints.net/U+1F402) OX - shortest name.

* U+1FBA8 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL UPPER CENTRE TO MIDDLE LEFT AND MIDDLE RIGHT TO LOWER CENTRE

    and

    U+1FBA9 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL UPPER CENTRE TO MIDDLE RIGHT AND MIDDLE LEFT TO LOWER CENTRE - longest name: 88

    characters each.

* [U+FDFA](https://codepoints.net/U+FDFA) ARABIC LIGATURE SALLALLAHOU ALAYHE

    WASALLAM - longest decomposition form: 18 characters.

* [U+5146](https://codepoints.net/U+5146) and

    [U+16B61](https://codepoints.net/U+16B61) - code points that represent the

    highest “single-digit” number. In both cases that’s 1,000,000,000,000, a

    trillion.

* [U+0F33](https://codepoints.net/U+0F33) TIBETAN DIGIT HALF ZERO - code point that

    represents the _lowest_ “single-digit” number and at the same time the

    only negative one, -½.

* The trophy for most useless code points goes to

    [U+0080](https://codepoints.net/U+0080),

    [U+0081](https://codepoints.net/U+0081) and

    [U+0099](https://codepoints.net/U+0099). These so-called C1 control

    characters are more or less unspecified. They got into Unicode, because

    they were present in the very first version of what should later become ISO

    10646, the ISO-standardized version of Unicode. They [were meant to be part

    of an upgrade to ISO

    2022](http://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m10/0050.html), that

    never came to be.

* A close second place in this regard goes to the CJK unified ideographs

    [妛](https://codepoints.net/U+599B),

    [挧](https://codepoints.net/U+6327),

    [暃](https://codepoints.net/U+6683),

    [椦](https://codepoints.net/U+6926),

    [槞](https://codepoints.net/U+69DE),

    [蟐](https://codepoints.net/U+87D0),

    [袮](https://codepoints.net/U+88AE),

    [閠](https://codepoints.net/U+95A0),

    [駲](https://codepoints.net/U+99F2),

    [墸](https://codepoints.net/U+58B8),

    [壥](https://codepoints.net/U+58E5), and

    [彁](https://codepoints.net/U+5F41). These so-called [“ghost characters”](https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html)

    came to Unicode via the Japanese JIS standard, where they were added, because

    they were mis-read or misinterpreted from other signs, when JIS was compiled

    from original printed text sources.

* [U+006F](https://codepoints.net/U+006F) LATIN SMALL LETTER O - leads the list

    of characters with confusable shapes. Of all the possible mappings in the

    [list of confusable

    characters](http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr39/#Data_Files), the small “o”

    leads with a whopping 73 entries of similar looking glyphs, followed by

    [U+006C](https://codepoints.net/U+006C) LATIN SMALL LETTER L with 70

    entries.

* [U+1F4C0](https://codepoints.net/U+1F4C0) DVD - only code point name without any vowel ([source](https://twitter.com/ken_lunde/status/960188623390846976))

* [U+3106C](https://codepoints.net/U+3106C) CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH 3106C - the

    character with the most

    [strokes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_strokes): 84.

    Take your time to write this one!



## For Funsies



* [U+1680](https://codepoints.net/U+1680) OGHAM SPACE MARK - a space that looks

    like a dash. Great to bring programmers close to madness: `1 +  2 === 3`.

* [U+037E](https://codepoints.net/U+037E) GREEK QUESTION MARK - a look-alike to

    the semicolon. Also a fun way to annoy developers.

* [U+1DD2](https://codepoints.net/U+1DD2) COMBINING US ABOVE - this is the most

    romantic code point.

* [U+F8FF](https://codepoints.net/U+F8FF) PRIVATE USE CODEPOINT - this private

    use code point is rendered as Apple logo on many Apple devices.

* [U+1F574](https://codepoints.net/U+1F574) MAN IN BUSINESS SUIT LEVITATING -

    A rather curious character, that only made it into Unicode for its

    appearance in the Webdings font (for reasons of backwards compatibility).

* [U+1F596](https://codepoints.net/U+1F596) RAISED HAND WITH PART BETWEEN

    MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS - the Vulcan salute. Live long and prosper!

    🖖

* [U+1F918](https://codepoints.net/U+1F918) SIGN OF THE HORNS - Rock on!

    🤘

* [U+2800](https://codepoints.net/U+2800) BRAILLE PATTERN BLANK - A Braille pattern that has zero of its six or eight dots filled in. According to the standard: “* while this character is imaged as a fixed-width blank in many fonts, it does not act as a space” Essentially it is rendered as white-space, but since it is designated as *not* white-space it isn't matched by white-space-validating regular expressions. This can be used to bypass all kinds of validation that disallows or trims white-space.



### Games



For plain-text gaming, Unicode is well equipped with several complete sets:



* [Chess figures](https://codepoints.net/U+2654..U+265F).

* [Card suits](https://codepoints.net/U+2660..U+2667) and even a whole [deck of

    cards](https://codepoints.net/playing_cards) complete with joker and back

    of card.

* [Die faces](https://codepoints.net/U+2680..U+2685) and a nice [die

    emoji](https://codepoints.net/U+1F3B2).

* [Go pieces](https://codepoints.net/U+2686..U+2689).

* [Draughts (or checkers) pieces](https://codepoints.net/U+26C0..U+26C3).

* [Shogi pieces](https://codepoints.net/U+2616,U+2617,U+26C9,U+26CA), a

    [Japanese variant of chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi).

* [Domino tiles](https://codepoints.net/domino_tiles)

* [Mahjong tiles](https://codepoints.net/mahjong_tiles)



## Other Lists of Code Points



* [Cross-platform terminal characters](https://github.com/ehmicky/cross-platform-terminal-characters) - a list of characters that work on most terminals.



## Contributing Your Code Points



See [the contribution guide](CONTRIBUTING.md) for details.



## License



[![CC0](https://i.creativecommons.org/p/zero/1.0/88x31.png)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)



To the extent possible under law, [the

contributors](https://github.com/Codepoints/awesome-codepoints/graphs/contributors)

have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. See

[the license file](LICENSE) for details.