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404 lines
17 KiB
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<h1 id="awesome-code-points-awesome">Awesome Code Points <a
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href="https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome"><img
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src="https://cdn.rawgit.com/sindresorhus/awesome/d7305f38d29fed78fa85652e3a63e154dd8e8829/media/badge.svg"
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alt="Awesome" /></a></h1>
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<p>This is a curated list of characters in Unicode, that have
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interesting (and maybe not widely known) features or are awesome in some
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other way.</p>
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<h2 id="table-of-contents">Table of Contents</h2>
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<ol type="1">
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<li><a href="#standalone-code-points">Standalone code points</a></li>
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<li><a href="#code-points-that-affect-others">Code points that affect
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others</a>
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<ol type="1">
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<li><a href="#breaking-and-gluing-other-characters">Breaking and Gluing
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other characters</a></li>
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</ol></li>
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<li><a href="#record-holders-and-extremes">Record holders and
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extremes</a></li>
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<li><a href="#for-funsies">For funsies</a>
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<ol type="1">
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<li><a href="#games">Games</a></li>
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</ol></li>
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<li><a href="#other-lists-of-code-points">Other Lists of Code
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Points</a></li>
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<li><a href="#contributing-your-code-points">Contributing</a></li>
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<li><a href="#license">License</a></li>
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</ol>
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<h2 id="standalone-code-points">Standalone Code Points</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><p>The code points of the Unicode blocks <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/box_drawing">Box Drawing</a> (U+2500 to
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U+257F) and <a href="https://codepoints.net/block_elements">Block
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Elements</a> (U+2580 to U+259F) cover most of your monospace
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command-line visualization needs.</p>
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<pre><code> ╭───────╮
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│Unicode│
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│rules! │
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╰┬─────┬╯</code></pre></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2E2E">U+2E2E</a> REVERSED
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QUESTION MARK - the “irony mark” to express irony/sarcasm. A useful
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character⸮</p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+D800">U+D800</a> to <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+DFFF">U+DFFF</a> - surrogate code points.
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They are only reserved to ease <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16">UTF-16
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encoding</a>.</p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+FEFF">U+FEFF</a> ZERO WIDTH
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NO-BREAK SPACE - it’s name suggests, that it can be used like U+2060
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WORD JOINER. And in fact the latter was introduced to inherit its
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semantics. This is because U+FEFF had become a special beacon called the
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark">byte order
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mark</a>, that was placed on the beginning of some UTF-8 files. In
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complying software (including many text editors) this character is
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stripped from the start of a file and handled as metadata. In
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non-complying software (like the PHP interpreter) this leads to all
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sorts of fun behaviour.</p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+FFFD">U+FFFD</a> REPLACEMENT
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CHARACTER - when a character cannot be displayed (e.g., decoding an
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erroneous UTF-8 sequency), this code point steps into the
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breach.</p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1D455">U+1D455</a> is missing.
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It would be an italic small “h”. It was not encoded, because it would be
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identical to the Planck constant ℎ (<a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+210E">U+210E</a>).</p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+FF03">U+FF03</a> FULLWIDTH
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NUMBER SIGN - it is the “Japanese Hashtag” <code>＃</code>. Sites like
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Twitter accept it as equivalent to the regular <code>#</code> (<a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+0023">U+0023</a>).</p></li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="code-points-that-affect-others">Code Points that Affect
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Others</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+202D">U+202D</a> and <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+202E">U+202E</a> - change the text
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direction. Relevant XKCD:</p>
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<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/1137/"><img
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src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/rtl.png" /></a></p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+FE0E">U+FE0E</a> VARIATION
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SELECTOR-15 - force black-<em>&</em>-white emoji. If this code point
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follows an emoji, an explicit monochrome rendering of the emoji is
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requested (if the client supports it).</p></li>
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<li><p><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+FE0F">U+FE0F</a> VARIATION
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SELECTOR-16 - force colorful emoji. If this code point follows an emoji,
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an explicit colorful rendering of the emoji is requested (if the client
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supports it).</p></li>
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<li><p>Diacritics and combining marks: There is a <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/search?gc=Mn">host of characters</a>, that
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add to the characters before. Those are called Combining Marks. Unicode
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provides a <a href="http://unicode.org/faq/char_combmark.html">handy
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FAQ</a> on the details, but in a nutshell: If you add one after a
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character, it is placed on top of that previous one. So,
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<code>a + ̊ = å</code>. This <em>may</em> lead to all kinds of funny
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problems, because for some combinations there are pre-composed
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characters. Our little <code>å</code> here can also be encoded as
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U+00E5. You might note, that while this has a length of one character,
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the combination of <code>a</code> and combining ring has a length of two
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characters.</p>
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<p>Of course, one can also do fun things with those characters like <a
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href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/113195">this answer</a> on
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StackOverflow.</p></li>
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<li><p>The <a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F1E6..U+1F1FF">Regional
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Indicator Symbols</a> U+1F1E6 to U+1F1FF resemble the 26 latin
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characters. They are used to create flag emoji. Since the Unicode
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consortium didn’t feel like getting on board with international
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politics, the solution to flags is to combine these 26 characters to the
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respective ISO code for a country. Examples:</p>
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<table>
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<thead>
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<tr class="header">
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<th>Country</th>
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<th>ISO Code</th>
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<th>Code Points</th>
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<th>Emoji (if supported)</th>
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</tr>
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</thead>
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<tbody>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>USA</td>
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<td>US</td>
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<td>U+1F1FA + U+1F1F8</td>
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<td>🇺🇸</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="even">
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<td>Germany</td>
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<td>DE</td>
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<td>U+1F1E9 + U+1F1EA</td>
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<td>🇩🇪</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>China</td>
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<td>CN</td>
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<td>U+1F1E8 + U+1F1F3</td>
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<td>🇨🇳</td>
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</tr>
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</tbody>
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</table></li>
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<li><p>Skin color of emoji: There are five code points, that control the
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skin color of emoji, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F3FB..U+1F3FF">U+1F3FB to U+1F3FF</a>.
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They are called “Emoji Modifier Fitzpatrick Type” 1 to 6, with 1 the
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palest and 6 the darkest. If one of these characters follows an emoji,
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that emoji is meant to be rendered in the appropriate skin color of <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale">the Fitzpatrick
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scale</a>. If no such modifier is added, the skin tone should be
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unnatural, e. g., bright yellow. Fun fact: Since the Fitzpatrick
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modifiers are normal code points, emoji with such skin colors have the
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length 2, which Twitter users noticed first. Here is a comparison chart
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<a
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href="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-2.html#Diversity">directly
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from the specification</a>:</p>
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<table>
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<colgroup>
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<col style="width: 14%" />
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<col style="width: 68%" />
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<col style="width: 16%" />
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</colgroup>
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<thead>
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<tr class="header">
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<th>Code</th>
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<th>Name</th>
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<th>Samples</th>
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</tr>
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</thead>
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<tbody>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>U+1F3FB</td>
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<td>EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-1-2</td>
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<td><img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-1-2.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto">
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<img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-1-2-bw.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto"></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="even">
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<td>U+1F3FC</td>
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<td>EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-3</td>
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<td><img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-3.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto">
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<img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-3-bw.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto"></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>U+1F3FD</td>
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<td>EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-4</td>
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<td><img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-4.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto">
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<img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-4-bw.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto"></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="even">
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<td>U+1F3FE</td>
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<td>EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-5</td>
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<td><img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-5.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto">
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<img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-5-bw.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto"></td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>U+1F3FF</td>
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<td>EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-6</td>
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<td><img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-6.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto">
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<img src="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/images/other/swatch-type-6-bw.png" alt="" height="20" width="auto"></td>
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</tr>
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</tbody>
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</table></li>
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</ul>
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<h3 id="breaking-and-gluing-other-characters">Breaking and Gluing other
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characters</h3>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+00A0">U+00A0</a> NO-BREAK SPACE -
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force adjacent characters to stick together. Well known as
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<code>&nbsp;</code> in HTML.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+00AD">U+00AD</a> SOFT HYPHEN - (in
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HTML: <code>&shy;</code>) like ZERO WIDTH SPACE, but show a hyphen
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if (and only if) a break occurs.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+200B">U+200B</a> ZERO WIDTH SPACE
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- the inverse to U+00A0: create no space, but allow word breaking.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+200D">U+200D</a> ZERO WIDTH JOINER
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- force adjacent characters to be joined together (e.g., arabic
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characters or supported emoji). Apple uses this to compose some emoji
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like different families.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2060">U+2060</a> WORD JOINER - the
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same as U+00A0, but completely invisible. Good for writing
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<code>@font-face</code> on Twitter.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>For better comparison of which code point has which effect, consult
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this table:</p>
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<table>
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<thead>
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<tr class="header">
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<th> </th>
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<th>U+00A0</th>
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<th>U+00AD</th>
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<th>U+200B</th>
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<th>U+200D</th>
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<th>U+2060</th>
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</tr>
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</thead>
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<tbody>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>create space</td>
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<td>✓</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="even">
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<td>allow breaking</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✓</td>
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<td>✓</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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</tr>
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<tr class="odd">
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<td>possible change</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✓</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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<td>✓</td>
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<td>✗</td>
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</tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<p>Smashing Magazine featured <a
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href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/10/space-yourself/">a
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comprehensive article</a> on the different types of whitespace.</p>
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<h2 id="record-holders-and-extremes">Record Holders and Extremes</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+0000">U+0000</a> <control> -
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first code point.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+10FFFF">U+10FFFF</a>
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(<em>non-character</em>) - last code point. The whole rest of its plane
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apart from U+10FFFE, the code points in the 0x10000-0x10FFFD range, are
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private use characters, guaranteed to be never filled by a future
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Unicode standard.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F402">U+1F402</a> OX - shortest
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name.</li>
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<li>U+1FBA8 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL UPPER CENTRE TO MIDDLE LEFT AND
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MIDDLE RIGHT TO LOWER CENTRE and U+1FBA9 BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DIAGONAL
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UPPER CENTRE TO MIDDLE RIGHT AND MIDDLE LEFT TO LOWER CENTRE - longest
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name: 88 characters each.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+FDFA">U+FDFA</a> ARABIC LIGATURE
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SALLALLAHOU ALAYHE WASALLAM - longest decomposition form: 18
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characters.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+5146">U+5146</a> and <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+16B61">U+16B61</a> - code points that
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represent the highest “single-digit” number. In both cases that’s
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1,000,000,000,000, a trillion.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+0F33">U+0F33</a> TIBETAN DIGIT
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HALF ZERO - code point that represents the <em>lowest</em>
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“single-digit” number and at the same time the only negative one,
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-½.</li>
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<li>The trophy for most useless code points goes to <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+0080">U+0080</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+0081">U+0081</a> and <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+0099">U+0099</a>. These so-called C1
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control characters are more or less unspecified. They got into Unicode,
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because they were present in the very first version of what should later
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become ISO 10646, the ISO-standardized version of Unicode. They <a
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href="http://unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2015-m10/0050.html">were
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meant to be part of an upgrade to ISO 2022</a>, that never came to
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be.</li>
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<li>A close second place in this regard goes to the CJK unified
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ideographs <a href="https://codepoints.net/U+599B">妛</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+6327">挧</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+6683">暃</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+6926">椦</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+69DE">槞</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+87D0">蟐</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+88AE">袮</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+95A0">閠</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+99F2">駲</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+58B8">墸</a>, <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+58E5">壥</a>, and <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+5F41">彁</a>. These so-called <a
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href="https://www.dampfkraft.com/ghost-characters.html">“ghost
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characters”</a> came to Unicode via the Japanese JIS standard, where
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they were added, because they were mis-read or misinterpreted from other
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signs, when JIS was compiled from original printed text sources.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+006F">U+006F</a> LATIN SMALL
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LETTER O - leads the list of characters with confusable shapes. Of all
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the possible mappings in the <a
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href="http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr39/#Data_Files">list of
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confusable characters</a>, the small “o” leads with a whopping 73
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entries of similar looking glyphs, followed by <a
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href="https://codepoints.net/U+006C">U+006C</a> LATIN SMALL LETTER L
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with 70 entries.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F4C0">U+1F4C0</a> DVD - only code
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point name without any vowel (<a
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href="https://twitter.com/ken_lunde/status/960188623390846976">source</a>)</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+3106C">U+3106C</a> CJK UNIFIED
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IDEOGRAPH 3106C - the character with the most <a
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href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_strokes">strokes</a>:
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84. Take your time to write this one!</li>
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</ul>
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<h2 id="for-funsies">For Funsies</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1680">U+1680</a> OGHAM SPACE MARK
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- a space that looks like a dash. Great to bring programmers close to
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madness: <code>1 + 2 === 3</code>.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+037E">U+037E</a> GREEK QUESTION
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MARK - a look-alike to the semicolon. Also a fun way to annoy
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developers.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1DD2">U+1DD2</a> COMBINING US
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ABOVE - this is the most romantic code point.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+F8FF">U+F8FF</a> PRIVATE USE
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CODEPOINT - this private use code point is rendered as Apple logo on
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many Apple devices.</li>
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<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F574">U+1F574</a> MAN IN BUSINESS
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SUIT LEVITATING - A rather curious character, that only made it into
|
||
Unicode for its appearance in the Webdings font (for reasons of
|
||
backwards compatibility).</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F596">U+1F596</a> RAISED HAND
|
||
WITH PART BETWEEN MIDDLE AND RING FINGERS - the Vulcan salute. Live long
|
||
and prosper! 🖖</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F918">U+1F918</a> SIGN OF THE
|
||
HORNS - Rock on! 🤘</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2800">U+2800</a> 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
|
||
<em>not</em> 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.</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h3 id="games">Games</h3>
|
||
<p>For plain-text gaming, Unicode is well equipped with several complete
|
||
sets:</p>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2654..U+265F">Chess
|
||
figures</a>.</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2660..U+2667">Card suits</a> and
|
||
even a whole <a href="https://codepoints.net/playing_cards">deck of
|
||
cards</a> complete with joker and back of card.</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2680..U+2685">Die faces</a> and a
|
||
nice <a href="https://codepoints.net/U+1F3B2">die emoji</a>.</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2686..U+2689">Go pieces</a>.</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+26C0..U+26C3">Draughts (or
|
||
checkers) pieces</a>.</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/U+2616,U+2617,U+26C9,U+26CA">Shogi
|
||
pieces</a>, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi">Japanese
|
||
variant of chess</a>.</li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/domino_tiles">Domino tiles</a></li>
|
||
<li><a href="https://codepoints.net/mahjong_tiles">Mahjong
|
||
tiles</a></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h2 id="other-lists-of-code-points">Other Lists of Code Points</h2>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><a
|
||
href="https://github.com/ehmicky/cross-platform-terminal-characters">Cross-platform
|
||
terminal characters</a> - a list of characters that work on most
|
||
terminals.</li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h2 id="contributing-your-code-points">Contributing Your Code
|
||
Points</h2>
|
||
<p>See <a href="CONTRIBUTING.md">the contribution guide</a> for
|
||
details.</p>
|
||
<h2 id="license">License</h2>
|
||
<p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/"><img
|
||
src="https://i.creativecommons.org/p/zero/1.0/88x31.png"
|
||
alt="CC0" /></a></p>
|
||
<p>To the extent possible under law, <a
|
||
href="https://github.com/Codepoints/awesome-codepoints/graphs/contributors">the
|
||
contributors</a> have waived all copyright and related or neighboring
|
||
rights to this work. See <a href="LICENSE">the license file</a> for
|
||
details.</p>
|
||
<p><a
|
||
href="https://github.com/Codepoints/awesome-codepoints">codepoints.md
|
||
Github</a></p>
|