Fonts and Special Characters for Websites

Really Useful Unicode

According to the Unicode Consortium, Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.
If you want to use a fancy character or Emoji on your website, like you see others using on Facebook or their Smart Phone, copy the code before the character to your website. If you want to use the character on Social Media or your Smart Phone, copy the character.

Click on links to the left to see codes and characters for various subsets of Unicode.


Other Unicode sites of Interest: &what; – Unicode Search. Emoji Cheat Sheet shows the short codes for Emoji. Emoji are basically pictures for Unicode Characters. Each operating system has its own picture. On Smart Phones, you can use the emoji keyboard for an Emoji. FileFormat.Info is also helpful with Unicode. Unicode Shapecatcher lets you draw a picture. It then shows some Unicode characters which come close to what you’ve drawn. It tends to only search the more picture-like Unicode characters, which may be just what you want.


Note that most Unicode websites use pictures or some font you don’t have on your computer to display the Unicode. I use Arial, except on the Symbola page. The other fonts which cover most Unicode Characters are Code2000 and Noto. If you want a font with serifs [those little extra marks like you’re seeing at the top and bottom of these letters, use a combination of Times New Roman and Quivira. If you’re seeing lots of 🿿 and would rather see the character the webdesigner intended, it may be good to download and install Noto font.

If you want to use Emoji picture you can use them from Emoji@ne by replacing the unicode in the img tag with the unicode for your symbol. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/emojione/assets/png/1F1FA-1F1F8.png?v=1.2.4"> results in . 1F1FA followed by 1F1F8 are the regional indicators 🇺🇸. Using these regional indicators may result in the US Flag on Smart Phones, but not on a website. You have to use an image instead.