Enclosed Alphanumerics

Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block (a group of symbols in Unicode). It has 160 symbols. Most of the symbols in the block are letters and numbers inside of circles or in parentheses. In the first Unicode plane (Basic Multilingual Plane), the blocks Dingbats and Enclosed CJK Letters and Months have more numbers inside of circles. In the next plane, the block Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement has symbols of letters inside of more circles, parentheses, and squares.

Many of the symbols were made to be used as bullets when writing lists.[1] The numbers and letters in parentheses were made to look like how typewriters showed numbers and letters in circles.[1] Unicode was made to think that the characters in this block look different than similar copyright symbols (for example, the copyright symbol (left) and the enclosed C (right): © and Ⓒ).[1] The circled S (Ⓢ) was used by German missionaries at around 1900 as a symbol for the ditto mark.[2]

Symbols

Enclosed Alphanumerics[3]
Character Meaning Code
Numbers 1-20 inside of a circle. U+2460
U+2461
U+2462
U+2463
U+2464
U+2465
U+2466
U+2467
U+2468
U+2469
U+246A
U+246B
U+246C
U+246D
U+246E
U+246F
U+2470
U+2471
U+2472
U+2473
Numbers 1-20 inside of parentheses. U+2474
U+2475
U+2476
U+2477
U+2478
U+2479
U+247A
U+247B
U+247C
U+247D
U+247E
U+247F
U+2480
U+2481
U+2482
U+2483
U+2484
U+2485
U+2486
U+2487
Numbers 1-20 with a period next to it. U+2488
U+2489
U+248A
U+248B
U+248C
U+248D
U+248E
U+248F
U+2490
U+2491
U+2492
U+2493
U+2494
U+2495
U+2496
U+2497
U+2498
U+2499
U+249A
U+249B
Lowercase letters A-Z inside of parentheses. U+249C
U+249D
U+249E
U+249F
U+24A0
U+24A1
U+24A2
U+24A3
U+24A4
U+24A5
U+24A6
U+24A7
U+24A8
U+24A9
U+24AA
U+24AB
U+24AC
U+24AD
U+24AE
U+24AF
U+24B0
U+24B1
U+24B2
U+24B3
U+24B4
U+24B5
Capital letters A-Z inside of a circle. U+24B6
U+24B7
U+24B8
U+24B9
U+24BA
U+24BB
U+24BC
U+24BD
U+24BE
U+24BF
U+24C0
U+24C1
U+24C2
U+24C3
U+24C4
U+24C5
U+24C6
U+24C7
U+24C8
U+24C9
U+24CA
U+24CB
U+24CC
U+24CD
U+24CE
U+24CF
Lowercase letters A-Z inside of a circle. U+24D0
U+24D1
U+24D2
U+24D3
U+24D4
U+24D5
U+24D6
U+24D7
U+24D8
U+24D9
U+24DA
U+24DB
U+24DC
U+24DD
U+24DE
U+24DF
U+24E0
U+24E1
U+24E2
U+24E3
U+24E4
U+24E5
U+24E6
U+24E7
U+24E8
U+24E9
Number 0 inside of a circle. U+24EA
Numbers 11-20 inside of a black circle. U+24EB
U+24EC
U+24ED
U+24EE
U+24EF
U+24F0
U+24F1
U+24F2
U+24F3
U+24F4
Numbers 1-10 inside of two circles. U+24F5
U+24F6
U+24F7
U+24F8
U+24F9
U+24FA
U+24FB
U+24FC
U+24FD
U+24FE
Number 0 inside of a black circle. U+24FF

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Unicode Standard, 6.0.1
  2. Joseph Muliyil; M Krishnan (1904). "Contents". The New Malayalam Reader (in Malayalam). Mangalore: Basel Mission Book and Tract Repository. p. vii.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
  3. Unicode chart (PDF)