General Punctuation

Unicode character block

(1991)67 (+67)1.1 (1993)76 (+9)3.0 (1999)83 (+7)3.2 (2002)95 (+12)4.0 (2003)97 (+2)4.1 (2005)106 (+9)5.1 (2008)107 (+1)6.3 (2013)111 (+4) Unicode documentationCode chart ∣ Web pageNote: ^[1]^[2]

General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic and novel punctuation such as the interrobang, and invisible mathematical operators.

Additional punctuation characters are in the Supplemental Punctuation block and sprinkled in dozens of other Unicode blocks.

Block

General Punctuation^[1]^[2]^[3]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

U+200x

NQ
SP

MQ
SP

EN
SP

EM
SP

3/M
SP

4/M
SP

6/M
SP

F
SP

P
SP

TH
SP

H
SP

ZW
SP

ZW
NJ

ZW
J

LRM

RLM

U+201x

‐

NB
‑

‒

–

—

―

‖

‗

‘

’

‚

‛

“

”

„

‟

U+202x

†

‡

•

‣

․

‥

…

‧

L
SEP

P
SEP

LRE

RLE

PDF

LRO

RLO

NNB
SP

U+203x

‰

‱

′

″

‴

‵

‶

‷

‸

‹

›

※

‼

‽

‾

‿

U+204x

⁀

⁁

⁂

⁃

⁄

⁅

⁆

⁇

⁈

⁉

⁊

⁋

⁌

⁍

⁎

⁏

U+205x

⁐

⁑

⁒

⁓

⁔

⁕

⁖

⁗

⁘

⁙

⁚

⁛

⁜

⁝

⁞

MM
SP

U+206x

ƒ()

LRI

RLI

FSI

PDI

I
SS

A
SS

I
AFS

A
AFS

NA
DS

NO
DS

Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1

2.^ Grey area indicates non-assigned code point

3.^ Unicode code points U+206A - U+206F are deprecated as of Unicode version 3.0

Several characters in this block are usually not rendered with a directly visible glyph. Ten whitespace characters U+2002 through U+200B (fixed en or 1⁄2em, em, 1⁄3em, 1⁄4em, 1⁄6em, figure and punctuation space, variable thin or 1⁄5em and hair space, fixed zero-width space) and U+205F (math medium or 2⁄9 em space) differ by horizontal width, while U+2000 and U+2001 (en and em quad) are effectively aliases of U+2002 and U+2003, respectively; another two, U+202F and U+2060 (ill-termed word joiner) are variants of U+2009 or U+2004 and U+200B that prohibit line-breaks. Three zero-width characters U+200B through U+200D (space, non-joiner and joiner) differ in how they affect ligation and shaping of adjacent letters such as contextual forms in Arabic. Eleven invisible characters U+200E, U+200F (left-to-right and right-to-left mark), U+202A through U+202E (embeds, pops and overrides) and U+2066 through U+2069 (isolates) control the directionality of text unless higher-level markup overrides them. There are explicit line and paragraph separators at U+2028 and U+2029.

Emoji

This section contains Unicode emoticons or emojis. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of the intended characters.

The General Punctuation block contains two emoji: U+203C and U+2049.^[3]^[4]

The block has four standardized variants defined to specify emoji-style (U+FE0F VS16) or text presentation (U+FE0E VS15) for the two emoji, both of which default to a text presentation.^[5]

Emoji variation sequences
U+	203C	2049
base code point	‼	⁉
base+VS15 (text)	‼︎	⁉︎
base+VS16 (emoji)	‼️	⁉️

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the General Punctuation block:

Version	Final code points^[a]	Count	UTC ID	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
1.0.0	U+2000..202E, 2030..203E, 2040..2044	67				(to be determined)
				L2/11-438^[b]^[c]	N4182	Edberg, Peter (2011-12-22), Emoji Variation Sequences (Revision of L2/11-429)
				L2/17-086		Burge, Jeremy; et al. (2017-03-27), Add ZWJ, VS-16, Keycaps & Tags to Emoji_Component
				L2/17-103		Moore, Lisa (2017-05-18), "E.1.7 Add ZWJ, VS-16, Keycaps & Tags to Emoji_Component", UTC #151 Minutes
1.1	U+203F, 2045..2046	3				(to be determined)
	U+206A..206F	6				(to be determined)
			UTC/1992-xxx			Freytag, Asmus (1992-05-12), "C. Bidi", Unconfirmed minutes for UTC Meeting #52, May 8, 1992 at Xerox
				L2/01-275		Davis, Mark (2001-07-16), New Properties (ReservedForCf, Deprecated, Discouraged)
				L2/01-301		Whistler, Ken (2001-08-01), "Alternate format controls inherited from 10646", Analysis of Character Deprecation in the Unicode Standard
				L2/01-326		Davis, Mark (2001-08-15), New Properties: Reserved_Cf_Code_Point & Deprecated
				L2/01-295R		Moore, Lisa (2001-11-06), "Motion 88-M13", Minutes from the UTC/L2 meeting #88
3.0	U+202F, 2048..2049	3		L2/97-288	N1603	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1997-10-24), "8.18", Unconfirmed Meeting Minutes, WG 2 Meeting # 33, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 20 June – 4 July 1997
				L2/98-088	N1711	The Working Meeting on Mongolian Encoding Attended by Representatives of China and Mongolia, 1998-02-15
				L2/98-104	N1734	Whistler, Ken (1998-03-20), Comments on the Mongolian Encoding Proposal, WG2 N1711
				L2/98-252 (pdf, txt)	N1833RM (pdf, doc)	Moore, Richard (1998-05-04), Feedback on Ken Whistler's Comments on Mongolian Encoding: N 1734
				L2/98-251 (pdf, html, txt)	N1808 (pdf, doc)	Reply to "Proposal WG2 N1734" Raised at the Seattle Meeting Regarding "Proposal WG 2 N1711", 1998-07-09
				L2/98-281R (pdf, html)		Aliprand, Joan (1998-07-31), "Mongolian (IV.A)", Unconfirmed Minutes – UTC #77 & NCITS Subgroup L2 # 174 JOINT MEETING, Redmond, WA -- July 29-31, 1998
					N1862	Revision of N1711 - Mongolian, 1998-09-17
					N1865	US Position - Mongolian (N1711, N1734 and N1808), 1998-09-18
					N1918	Paterson, Bruce (1998-10-28), Text for Combined PDAM registration and consideration ballot - SC2 N 3208
				L2/99-010	N1903 (pdf, html, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), "8.1.3", Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
				L2/99-075.1	N1973	Irish Comments on SC 2 N 3208, 1999-01-19
				L2/99-075	N1972 (pdf, html, doc)	Summary of Voting on SC 2 N 3208, PDAM ballot on WD for ISO/IEC 10646-1/Amd. 29: Mongolian, 1999-02-12
					N2020	Paterson, Bruce (1999-04-05), FPDAM 29 Text - Mongolian
				L2/99-113		Text for FPDAM ballot of ISO/IEC 10646, Amd. 29 - Mongolian, 1999-04-06
				L2/99-232	N2003	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1999-08-03), "6.1.3 PDAM29 – Mongolian script", Minutes of WG 2 meeting 36, Fukuoka, Japan, 1999-03-09--15
				L2/99-304	N2126	Paterson, Bruce (1999-10-01), Revised Text for FDAM ballot of ISO/IEC 10646-1/FDAM 29, AMENDMENT 29: Mongolian
				L2/99-381		Final text for ISO/IEC 10646-1, FDAM 29 -- Mongolian, 1999-12-07
				L2/00-010	N2103	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-01-05), "6.4.4", Minutes of WG 2 meeting 37, Copenhagen, Denmark: 1999-09-13—16
				L2/07-209		Whistler, Ken (2007-07-05), UTR 14 and U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
				L2/11-438^[b]^[c]	N4182	Edberg, Peter (2011-12-22), Emoji Variation Sequences (Revision of L2/11-429)
				L2/15-187		Moore, Lisa (2015-08-11), "B.14.5", UTC #144 Minutes
				L2/16-258	N4752R2	Eck, Greg (2016-09-19), Mongolian Base Forms, Positional Forms, & Variant Forms
				L2/16-259	N4753	Eck, Greg; Rileke, Orlog Ou (2016-09-20), WG2 #65 Mongolian Discussion Points
				L2/16-266	N4763	Anderson, Deborah; Whistler, Ken; McGowan, Rick; Pournader, Roozbeh; Glass, Andrew; Iancu, Laurențiu; Moore, Lisa (2016-09-26), "1. Mongolian", Comments on Mongolian, Small Khitan, and other WG2 #65 documents
				L2/16-297	N4769	Anderson, Deborah (2016-10-27), Mongolian ad hoc report
	U+204A	1		L2/98-214	N1747	Everson, Michael (1998-05-25), Contraction characters for the UCS
				L2/98-281R (pdf, html)		Aliprand, Joan (1998-07-31), "Characters from ISO 5426-2 (IV.C.5-6)", Unconfirmed Minutes – UTC #77 & NCITS Subgroup L2 # 174 JOINT MEETING, Redmond, WA -- July 29-31, 1998
				L2/98-292R (pdf, html, Figure 1)		"2.6", Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-19
				L2/98-292	N1840	"2.6", Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-25
				L2/98-301	N1847	Everson, Michael (1998-09-12), Responses to NCITS/L2 and Unicode Consortium comments on numerous proposals
				L2/98-372	N1884R2 (pdf, doc)	Whistler, Ken; et al. (1998-09-22), Additional Characters for the UCS
				L2/98-329	N1920 Archived 2020-10-02 at the Wayback Machine	Combined PDAM registration and consideration ballot on WD for ISO/IEC 10646-1/Amd. 30, AMENDMENT 30: Additional Latin and other characters, 1998-10-28
				L2/99-010	N1903 (pdf, html, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), "8.1.5.1", Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
	U+204B..204D	3		L2/98-215	N1748	Everson, Michael (1998-05-25), Additional signature mark characters for the UCS
				L2/98-281R (pdf, html)		Aliprand, Joan (1998-07-31), "Signature Marks (IV.C.7)", Unconfirmed Minutes – UTC #77 & NCITS Subgroup L2 # 174 JOINT MEETING, Redmond, WA -- July 29-31, 1998
				L2/98-292R (pdf, html, Figure 1)		"2.7", Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-19
				L2/98-292	N1840	"2.7", Comments on proposals to add characters from ISO standards developed by ISO/TC 46/SC 4, 1998-08-25
				L2/98-301	N1847	Everson, Michael (1998-09-12), Responses to NCITS/L2 and Unicode Consortium comments on numerous proposals
				L2/98-372	N1884R2 (pdf, doc)	Whistler, Ken; et al. (1998-09-22), Additional Characters for the UCS
				L2/98-329	N1920 Archived 2020-10-02 at the Wayback Machine	Combined PDAM registration and consideration ballot on WD for ISO/IEC 10646-1/Amd. 30, AMENDMENT 30: Additional Latin and other characters, 1998-10-28
				L2/99-010	N1903 (pdf, html, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1998-12-30), "8.1.5.1", Minutes of WG 2 meeting 35, London, U.K.; 1998-09-21--25
3.2	U+2047, 2051	2		L2/99-238		Consolidated document containing 6 Japanese proposals, 1999-07-15
					N2092	Addition of forty eight characters, 1999-09-13
				L2/99-365		Moore, Lisa (1999-11-23), Comments on JCS Proposals
				L2/00-024		Shibano, Kohji (2000-01-31), JCS proposal revised
				L2/99-260R		Moore, Lisa (2000-02-07), "JCS Proposals", Minutes of the UTC/L2 meeting in Mission Viejo, October 26-28, 1999
				L2/00-098, L2/00-098-page5	N2195	Rationale for non-Kanji characters proposed by JCS committee, 2000-03-15
				L2/00-119^[d]	N2191R	Whistler, Ken; Freytag, Asmus (2000-04-19), Encoding Additional Mathematical Symbols in Unicode
				L2/00-234	N2203 (rtf, txt)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-07-21), "8.18, 8.20", Minutes from the SC2/WG2 meeting in Beijing, 2000-03-21 -- 24
				L2/00-115R2		Moore, Lisa (2000-08-08), "Motion 83-M11", Minutes Of UTC Meeting #83
				L2/00-297	N2257	Sato, T. K. (2000-09-04), JIS X 0213 symbols part-1
				L2/00-342	N2278	Sato, T. K.; Everson, Michael; Whistler, Ken; Freytag, Asmus (2000-09-20), Ad hoc Report on Japan feedback N2257 and N2258
				L2/01-050	N2253	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-01-21), "7.16 JIS X0213 Symbols", Minutes of the SC2/WG2 meeting in Athens, September 2000
	U+204E..2050, 2057, 205F, 2061..2062	7		L2/00-005R2		Moore, Lisa (2000-02-14), "Motion 82-M11", Minutes of UTC #82 in San Jose
				L2/00-119^[d]	N2191R	Whistler, Ken; Freytag, Asmus (2000-04-19), Encoding Additional Mathematical Symbols in Unicode
				L2/00-234	N2203 (rtf, txt)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2000-07-21), "8.18", Minutes from the SC2/WG2 meeting in Beijing, 2000-03-21 -- 24
				L2/00-115R2		Moore, Lisa (2000-08-08), "Motion 83-M11", Minutes Of UTC Meeting #83
	U+2052, 2063	2		L2/01-142^[d]	N2336	Beeton, Barbara; Freytag, Asmus; Ion, Patrick (2001-04-02), Additional Mathematical Symbols
				L2/01-156	N2356	Freytag, Asmus (2001-04-03), Additional Mathematical Characters (Draft 10)
				L2/01-344	N2353 (pdf, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-09-09), "7.7 Mathematical Symbols", Minutes from SC2/WG2 meeting #40 -- Mountain View, April 2001
	U+2060	1		L2/99-260R		Moore, Lisa (2000-02-07), "Unicode in Markup Languages", Minutes of the UTC/L2 meeting in Mission Viejo, October 26-28, 1999
				L2/00-005R2		Moore, Lisa (2000-02-14), "Zero Width Grapheme Break/Join", Minutes of UTC #82 in San Jose, Action Item for Arnold Winkler: As the zero width grapheme break/join proposal was withdrawn, re-open Action Item 81-12 (for Mark Davis to prepare a proposal for WG2 for the Zero Width Word Joiner.)
				L2/00-258	N2235	Davis, Mark (2000-08-09), Proposal for addition of ZERO WIDTH WORD JOINER
				L2/00-369		Whistler, Ken (2000-10-06), "e. (ZERO WIDTH) WORD JOINER", WG2 in Vouliagmeni (Athens)
				L2/01-050	N2253	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-01-21), "7.7 Proposal for addition of ZERO WIDTH WORDJOINER", Minutes of the SC2/WG2 meeting in Athens, September 2000
4.0	U+2053..2054	2		L2/02-141	N2419	Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20), Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS
				L2/02-192		Everson, Michael (2002-05-02), Everson's Reply on UPA
					N2442	Everson, Michael; Kolehmainen, Erkki I.; Ruppel, Klaas; Trosterud, Trond (2002-05-21), Justification for placing the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet in the BMP
				L2/02-291		Whistler, Ken (2002-05-31), WG2 report from Dublin
				L2/02-292		Whistler, Ken (2002-06-03), Early look at WG2 consent docket
				L2/02-166R2		Moore, Lisa (2002-08-09), "Scripts and New Characters - UPA", UTC #91 Minutes
				L2/02-253		Moore, Lisa (2002-10-21), "Consensus 92-C2", UTC #92 Minutes
4.1	U+2055	1		L2/03-151R		Constable, Peter; Lloyd-Williams, James; Lloyd-Williams, Sue; Chowdhury, Shamsul Islam; Ali, Asaddar; Sadique, Mohammed; Chowdhury, Matiar Rahman (2003-05-10), Revised Proposal for Encoding Syloti Nagri Script in the BMP
	U+2055	1		L2/03-136		Moore, Lisa (2003-08-18), "Scripts and New Characters - Syloti Nagri Script", UTC #95 Minutes
	U+2056, 2058..2059	3		L2/03-282R	N2610R	Everson, Michael; Cleminson, Ralph (2003-09-04), Final proposal for encoding the Glagolitic script in the UCS
	U+2056, 2058..2059	3		L2/03-324	N2642	Pantelia, Maria (2003-10-06), Proposal to encode additional Greek editorial and punctuation characters in the UCS
	U+205A..205C	3		L2/03-157		Pantelia, Maria (2003-05-19), Additional Beta Code Characters not in Unicode (WIP)
	U+205A..205C	3		L2/03-193R	N2612-7	Pantelia, Maria (2003-06-11), Proposal to encode additional Punctuation Characters in the UCS
	U+205D	1		L2/02-312R		Pantelia, Maria (2002-11-07), Proposal to encode additional Greek editorial and punctuation characters in the UCS
	U+205D	1		L2/03-324	N2642	Pantelia, Maria (2003-10-06), Proposal to encode additional Greek editorial and punctuation characters in the UCS
	U+205E	1		L2/03-354	N2655	Freytag, Asmus (2003-10-10), Proposal -- Symbols used in Dictionaries
	U+205E	1		L2/03-356R2		Moore, Lisa (2003-10-22), "Consensus 97-C15", UTC #97 Minutes
5.1	U+2064	1		L2/07-011R	N3198R	Freytag, Asmus; Beeton, Barbara; Ion, Patrick; Sargent, Murray; Carlisle, David; Pournader, Roozbeh (2007-01-15), 29 Additional Mathematical and Symbol Characters
				L2/07-015		Moore, Lisa (2007-02-08), "Mathematical Characters and Symbols (C.4)", UTC #110 Minutes
				L2/07-268	N3253 (pdf, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2007-07-26), "M50.16", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 50, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; 2007-04-24/27
6.3	U+2066..2069	4		L2/12-186R		Lanin, Aharon; Davis, Mark; Pournader, Roozbeh (2012-07-24), A Proposal for Bidi Isolates in Unicode
				L2/12-290	N4310	Lanin, Aharon; Davis, Mark; Pournader, Roozbeh (2012-07-31), Proposal for Four Characters for Bidi
				L2/12-239		Moore, Lisa (2012-08-14), "Consensus 132-C12", UTC #132 Minutes
				L2/13-040		Pournader, Roozbeh; Lanin, Aharon (2013-01-29), Fasttracking Arabic Letter Mark (ALM)
				L2/13-125	N4447	Constable, Peter (2013-06-10), Unicode Liaison Report to WG2
^ Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names ^ ^a ^b See also L2/10-458, L2/11-414, L2/11-415, and L2/11-429 ^ ^a ^b Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block for additional emoji-related documents ^ ^a ^b ^c Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols-B block for additional math-related documents

References

^ "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
^ "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
^ "UTR #51: Unicode Emoji". Unicode Consortium. 2023-09-05.
^ "UCD: Emoji Data for UTR #51". Unicode Consortium. 2023-02-01.
^ "UTS #51 Emoji Variation Sequences". The Unicode Consortium.