What is a character map?

A character map is a utility that displays all the characters available in a selected font. It allows users to view, search for, and copy individual characters, including special symbols, Unicode characters, and HTML entities, that may not be easily accessible via a standard keyboard.

What is the difference between ASCII and Unicode?

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is an older character encoding standard that represents 128 characters, primarily English letters, numbers, and basic punctuation. Unicode is a much more extensive and universal character encoding standard that aims to represent every character from every writing system in the world, including emojis and special symbols.

How do I use characters copied from the map?

Once you click on a character, its symbol, HTML entity, or Unicode value is copied to your clipboard. You can then paste it directly into your document, web page, code editor, or any application that supports text input. For web development, using HTML entities or Unicode escape sequences is often recommended for broader compatibility.

Character Map

Explore and find Unicode and ASCII characters easily. Copy symbols, special characters, and HTML entities for your projects.

About Character Maps

A character map is a utility that provides a visual representation of all the characters available in various fonts and encoding standards. It's an invaluable resource for designers, developers, writers, and anyone who needs to access or insert characters not readily available on a standard keyboard.

Technical Details of Character Encoding

The digital world relies on character encoding standards to display text correctly. The two most prominent are:

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange): An early and foundational encoding standard that represents 128 characters, primarily English letters, numbers, and basic punctuation. It uses 7 bits per character.
Unicode: A universal character encoding standard designed to represent text from all of the world's writing systems. It assigns a unique number (code point) to every character, regardless of platform, program, or language. UTF-8 is the most common encoding form of Unicode on the web.
HTML Entities: Special sequences of characters used in HTML to represent characters that are reserved (like < for less than) or not easily typable. They often correspond to Unicode characters.

This tool allows you to explore characters by category and search, providing their symbol, HTML entity, and Unicode representation for easy copying and use.

Common Questions

Why do some characters appear as squares or question marks?

This usually indicates that the font being used does not contain a glyph (visual representation) for that specific Unicode character, or that the system's character encoding is not correctly set to UTF-8. Ensuring your document and system are set to UTF-8 and using a font with broad Unicode support can resolve this.

Can I use these characters in file names or URLs?

While technically possible, it's generally not recommended to use complex special characters directly in file names or URLs due to potential compatibility issues across different operating systems and web servers. For URLs, characters should be URL-encoded. For file names, stick to alphanumeric characters and common symbols like hyphens or underscores.

How can I find a specific character quickly?

You can use the search bar to type in the character's name (e.g., "copyright"), its symbol (e.g., "©"), or its HTML entity/Unicode value (e.g., "©", "©"). You can also filter by category to narrow down your search.