Symbol Generator

Every symbol on this page is a Unicode codepoint, which means it's a character in the same sense that a letter is. Copying one moves the character itself, not a picture of it. Whether it appears correctly on the other end depends on one thing: whether the font in use there contains a glyph for that codepoint.

Why you sometimes get an empty box

The empty rectangle people call tofu appears when the text renderer has the character but no font on the system can draw it. It's a missing glyph, not a broken copy or a corrupted string. The character is intact and will display correctly for someone whose device has a suitable font. That is why a symbol can look fine to you and broken to part of your audience.

Age is the best predictor of support. Symbols added to Unicode decades ago, such as arrows, card suits, basic geometric shapes, and mathematical operators, are close to universally available. Recently added blocks and specialized notation are far less reliable. If a symbol matters, prefer an older and more common one over a more precisely fitting rarity.

Symbols, emoji, and the presentation problem

Some characters live in both worlds and can render either as a flat monochrome glyph or as a color emoji, depending on the platform. Hearts, stars, and arrows are the usual culprits. Unicode handles this with variation selectors, invisible characters that request one presentation or the other, but platform support is inconsistent and many apps override the request anyway. The practical consequence is that a symbol you chose for a clean typographic look can arrive as a cartoon on someone else's phone.

Symbols carry meaning to screen readers

Assistive technology announces symbols rather than skipping them, and a decorative row of stars or arrows can turn into a long spoken sequence. A bio padded with ornaments may be read aloud as the same word repeated many times. Using a small number of symbols deliberately, rather than as visual filler, keeps the text usable for people who are listening to it instead of looking at it.

The same applies to symbols used as substitutes for letters. A star standing in for the letter A is still a star to a screen reader and to search, so the word stops being matchable. Keep anything that needs to be found or understood in ordinary characters.