Text symbols that are not emoji: ♡ ✓ • ☭ ☥ ⛧ ≤ and more, to copy

What makes a symbol an emoji

Unicode has more than 150,000 characters; about 3,900 of them are emoji. An emoji is a character that Unicode has listed for colourful picture display and that phones draw with their emoji font. Everything below is a real Unicode character you can paste anywhere, but it stays a black-and-white glyph in the text font. The advantage is consistency: ♡ looks like ♡ on every device. The catch is that a few very old fonts may lack a symbol and show a box.

Hearts, stars and checks

Copy ♡ heart outline

Copy ★

Copy ☆

Copy ✓

Copy ✗

Copy ✿

Copy ☾

The heart outline ♡ is the most searched of these. It is the “white heart suit” from the playing-card block, and because it is a text character it is the classic way to write a heart that stays an outline in usernames and bios, where the emoji 🤍 would render as a filled white heart.

Bullets and punctuation

Copy • bullet

Copy ◦

Copy · middle dot

Copy — em dash

Copy †

Copy °

Political, religious and esoteric symbols

These are searched for as emoji but have never been accepted as ones. ☭ hammer and sickle (U+262D) is the communist symbol; ☥ ankh (U+2625) is the Egyptian sign for life; ⛧ inverted pentagram (U+26E7) and ⛤ pentagram (U+26E4) are the five-pointed stars used in occult and Wiccan contexts; ☬ is the Sikh adi shakti (the emoji version is 🪯 khanda). ☪ ☯ ☸ ✡ ✝ have emoji forms covered on the religious symbols page.

Copy ☭ hammer and sickle

Copy ☥ ankh

Copy ⛧ inverted pentagram

Copy ⛤ pentagram

Copy ☬

Some platforms moderate or remove a few of these symbols in usernames. They are ordinary Unicode characters, but a site’s rules still apply to how they are used.

Math and comparison signs

Copy ≤

Copy ≥

Copy ≠

Copy ±

Copy ×

Copy ÷

Copy ∞

Copy √

Copy π

The keyboard shortcuts for these on Mac and Windows are in the keyboard shortcuts guide; on Mac, Option-comma gives ≤ and Option-period gives ≥.

Common text symbols that aren't emoji: music, boxes, quotes, logic and more

Many everyday marks are plain Unicode text characters, not emoji. They appear in the regular text font and can be copied anywhere.

• ♪ ♫ ♬ — music note text symbols; the emoji equivalent is 🎵.
• ☐ — empty check box (ballot box) text symbol.
• “ ” ‘ ’ — quotation marks; punctuation, not emoji.
• % — percent sign; never an emoji.
• ( ) [ ] { } — brackets; standard keyboard characters.
• 〰 — wavy line (squiggly line); text symbol.
• ☺ ☻ — black and white smiley face text symbols; emoji equivalents: 😊 😀.
• ⚣ — double mars symbol; a text symbol for gay men, not an emoji.
• ∧ ∨ — logical conjunction and disjunction symbols; not emoji.
• ☧ — chi rho; a Christian text symbol, not an emoji.
• ❀ ✿ ❁ — floral text symbols, not emoji. The shamrock ☘ has both text and emoji presentations; the emoji is ☘️.
• ♛ — black queen chess symbol; a text symbol, not an emoji.
• ⛧ ⛤ — pentagram and pentacle text symbols; not emoji.
• There is no standard butterfly text symbol; the butterfly is an emoji 🦋.

Heart, star and flower variations: hollow, sideways, floral and black star

The heart outline ♡ is the most well-known non-emoji heart. It is also called a hollow heart or empty heart. There is no sideways heart symbol in Unicode; a rotated heart is not standard. The floral heart ❦ and ❧ are ornamental punctuation, not emoji.

For stars, the black star ★ is a text symbol, not an emoji; the star emoji is ⭐ (yellow). A black star emoji does not exist. Similarly, the diamond bullet ◆ is a text bullet, and card suits like ♧ (white club) are also text symbols.

Black and white smiley faces

Some classic smiley faces are not emoji but plain text characters. The white smiling face ☺ and white frowning face ☹ are text glyphs, and they appear in monochrome on most devices unless an emoji variation is applied. This makes them useful when you want a simple, consistent look in places like plain-text emails or code comments.

If you want the emoji version, add the variation selector U+FE0F after the symbol: ☺️ displays as a full-colour smiley. For a broader range, many people still use text emoticons like :) :( :D ;) which are just keyboard characters and work everywhere.

Logic and nature text symbols

In logic and mathematics, the conjunct symbol ∧ (U+2227) represents conjunction, meaning “and”. It is a plain text character, not an emoji, so it stays monochrome in documents and chats. Copy ∧ from the math symbols section above. Related logic signs include ∨ (or), ¬ (not), and → (implies), which are also standard text symbols.

Some nature-themed symbols are text characters rather than emoji. For example, ☀ sun, ☁ cloud, ☂ umbrella, ☃ snowman, ☄ comet, and ☘ shamrock all appear as monochrome glyphs in most fonts. They are useful when you want a consistent outline look in usernames or documents. Copy them directly from this page; select the symbol and paste it where needed. If you need a coloured version, use the corresponding emoji instead.

Questions people ask