For Windows 10 users, you can search for the Character Map in your Start menu to see a list of Unicode characters you can choose from, though they won’t necessarily be displayed in your chosen font, and may still require you to to install optional font packs to boost the number of supported characters. In Apple’s macOS, you can see the list of supported Unicode characters by hitting Control-Command-Space and selecting the character viewer icon next to the search field. Seeing square boxes or dots instead of the emoji and characters you were expecting? That means whatever font you have installed doesn’t support the larger array of Unicode characters. Depending on your device’s font, how it displays character combinations, and which Unicode characters it supports, you’ll either see the combined symbol rendered properly, misaligned, or simply as two characters next to each other. That means there is no pre-made “anti-LGBT” flag, only one that appears when your device applies the character combining rules to the text you just entered. Unicode allows fonts to either use pre-made combined characters or rely on the standard’s rules for combining characters. You’ve probably seen combined characters before, like the acute accent combination in “Pokémon,” or the umlaut combination in the German word “schön.” The “no symbol” ⃠ itself is categorized in Unicode as a “combining character,” meaning it’s designed to overlay the preceding character. Unicode provides a standard way to represent text in multiple languages, symbols, and emoji by assigning each character - emoji included - a unique identification number that can be displayed by the font installed on your device.įor the officially designated “international prohibition sign,” that identification number is U+20E0.
Its members include individuals as well as major corporations like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. The reason you can see symbols like the “no sign” ⃠, your favorite emoji, accents in a French city name, or Japanese kanji on an online storefront, is the Unicode Standard, created by the Unicode Consortium.