Check Marks, Arrows and Star Symbols to Copy and Paste

The ones people come for, ready to copy:

• ✓ ✔ ☑Copy
• ✗ ✘ ☒Copy
• → ← ↑ ↓Copy
• ★ ☆ ✦Copy
• • ◦ ‣

Every one of those is a plain text character rather than an emoji, which is the part that matters if you are putting them in a spreadsheet, a slide deck or a document. The rest of this explains the difference and why picking wrong causes so much grief.

The one thing to understand before you copy anything

There are two completely different ✓ characters and they behave nothing alike.

✓ (U+2713) is a text character. It takes your font, your colour and your size. Put it in a spreadsheet cell and it sits neatly next to the text at the same weight.

✅ (U+2705) is an emoji. It is a white tick in a green rounded square, it is always that, and you cannot change the colour. Put it in a spreadsheet and it renders as a coloured blob that does not match anything around it, and it exports to PDF differently on different machines.

Ninety percent of the frustration people have with check marks comes from copying the second when they wanted the first. If your symbol is a different colour from your text, you have the emoji version.

Check marks and ticks

• ✓ ✔ ✅Copy
• ☑ ☑️ ✓Copy
• 🗸 ✓ ✔Copy

What each one is:

• ✓ U+2713, the standard check mark. This is the one you want most of the time.
• ✔ U+2714, the heavy check mark. Same shape, thicker stroke. Has an emoji presentation, so it sometimes turns green.
• ☑ U+2611, a ticked ballot box. Useful for checklists where you also want an unticked ☐ U+2610.
• ✅ U+2705, emoji only. Always a green box. No text version exists.
• 🗸 U+1F5F8, a light check mark. Thin and elegant, but poorly supported, so test it before you rely on it.

For an actual checklist, ☐ and ☑ as a pair beat a tick on its own, because an empty box communicates not done where a missing tick communicates nothing. Both live on the check and cross symbols page.

Crosses, Xs and rejections

• ✗ ✘ ❌Copy
• ☒ ✕ ✖Copy
• × ⨯ ✗Copy

The one worth knowing is × (U+00D7), the multiplication sign. It is not a cross mark, but it is the character most people actually want when they type an x between two numbers or use one as a close button, because it is properly centred and balanced where the letter x is not.

✗ and ✘ are the true ballot Xs, light and heavy. ❌ is the emoji, always red, same caveats as the green tick.

Arrows

The largest group by far and the one where our own search data shows people struggling most. There are over a hundred arrow characters in Unicode. These are the ones you will actually use.

• → ← ↑ ↓Copy
• ↔ ↕ ⇄ ⇅Copy
• ⇒ ⇐ ⇑ ⇓Copy
• ➜ ➔ ➞ ➙Copy
• ⟶ ⟵ ⟷Copy
• ↳ ↪ ↩ ↰Copy
• ▶ ◀ ▲ ▼Copy
• ➤ ➢ ➣Copy

Quick guide to picking one:

• → for prose and general use. It is the default and it renders everywhere.
• ⇒ for implies or results in. Double arrows carry a logical meaning in technical writing, so do not use them decoratively.
• ➜ for a heavier visual arrow in a heading or a slide, where → looks too thin.
• ↳ for indentation and reply threading. It is the one people hunt for and never find.
• ▶ for a play button or a collapsed section, since it is a triangle rather than an arrow.

Stars

• ★ ☆ ⭐Copy
• ✦ ✧ ✩Copy
• ✪ ✫ ✬Copy
• ✯ ✰ ⋆Copy
• ˚ ｡ ⋆ ˚Copy

★ (U+2605) and ☆ (U+2606) are the solid and outline stars, and together they are how every rating system that is not using images gets built. ★★★★☆ is four out of five and it works in a plain text field, an email subject line or a spreadsheet cell.

✦ and ✧ are four pointed stars from the dingbat block and they read as sparkle rather than rating. They are the backbone of aesthetic text decoration, which is a different job entirely. ⋆ (U+22C6) is a small star operator borrowed from maths and it is the smallest, most delicate of the lot.

More variants including the spinning and circled stars are on the star symbols page, and the decorative arrangements are on star text borders.

Bullets and dots

• • ◦ ‣
• ⁃ · ∙
• ▪ ▫ ▸Copy
• ※ ✱ ✳Copy

• (U+2022) is the standard bullet. ◦ (U+25E6) is the hollow one for a second level. ‣ (U+2023) is the triangular bullet, which almost nobody uses and which looks noticeably sharper in a slide deck.

The practical use for these is any field that does not support real lists. Instagram bios, Twitter and X profiles, LinkedIn headlines, YouTube descriptions and email signatures all strip list formatting, so a manual bullet character is the only way to get a list at all. Full set on the bullet symbols page and the dot symbols page.

The variation selector problem, again

Several of these characters have both a text and an emoji form, and the app decides which you get. ✔ ☑ ✖ ➡ ⭐ ✳ and ❗ are all in this category.

If one of them keeps turning colourful when you want plain, add the text presentation selector U+FE0E after it. The versions below already have it:

• ✔︎ ☑︎ ✖︎Copy
• ➡︎ ⬅︎ ⬆︎Copy

The invisible character travels with the copy, so pasting these gives you the monochrome form. If you want to avoid the problem entirely, use a character that has no emoji form at all: ✓ ✗ → ★ and • are all safe.

What breaks where

• Excel and Google Sheets: text symbols work perfectly and sort and filter as text. Emoji symbols render inconsistently between the desktop app, the web version and an exported PDF. Use ✓ not ✅.
• PowerPoint and Google Slides: same rule. An emoji tick on a slide will change size relative to the text when the deck is opened on a different operating system.
• Word: both work, but emoji symbols ignore your font choice, so a document set in a serif face gets a jarring colour glyph.
• CSV and code: all of these are fine as long as the file is UTF-8. A file saved in a legacy encoding will mangle them.
• Older Android and game clients: the rarer dingbats such as ✬ and ➞ may show as a box. The basic set of ✓ ✗ → ★ • is safe essentially everywhere. Our guide to symbols showing as a box covers why.

Dividers, lines and box drawing characters

The other group people hunt for constantly, usually for a bio or a plain text signature.

• ─ ━ ═Copy
• │ ┃ ║Copy
• ┌ ┐ └ ┘Copy
• ▁ ▂ ▃ ▄Copy
• ░ ▒ ▓ █Copy
• ⎯ ⏤ ⸺Copy

These come from the box drawing and block element ranges, originally designed so text terminals could draw tables and windows before graphics existed. They are monospaced in most fonts, which is exactly why they line up cleanly when you stack several rows.

The shade blocks ░ ▒ ▓ █ are the single most useful set here, because four levels of density give you a crude progress bar that works in any plain text field. █████░░░░░ is seventy percent, and it renders identically on every device. Our shade block symbols page and box drawing page have the full ranges.

Superscript, subscript and circled numbers

• ¹ ² ³ ⁴
• ₁ ₂ ₃ ₄
• ① ② ③ ④Copy
• ⑴ ⑵ ⑶ ⑷Copy
• Ⅰ Ⅱ Ⅲ Ⅳ

Circled numbers are genuinely useful in any field that strips list formatting, because they read as an ordered list without needing one. Superscripts let you write a footnote marker in a plain text field, and the Roman numerals are single characters rather than letters, so they sort and align properly in a spreadsheet column.

Both sets are on the circled number page and the superscript page.

What screen readers do with these

Worth knowing before you put a row of symbols in a public bio or a document heading.

Screen readers announce most of these by their Unicode name. A ✓ is read as check mark, which is fine and often helpful. A row of twenty ★ characters is read as star, twenty times, which is not.

Decorative dividers are the worst offenders. A border made of thirty box drawing characters gets announced as thirty individual characters, and there is no way for the reader to skip it. If the symbol is carrying meaning, use it. If it is purely decoration, use one or two rather than a row, and never put a decorative string inside a heading.

Emoji symbols are usually better behaved here than text symbols, because screen readers have specific handling for them. That is one of the few arguments in favour of ✅ over ✓.

How to type these without copying

Copying is faster, but if you need one regularly:

• Word and Outlook: type the hex code then press Alt and X. Typing 2713 then Alt+X gives ✓. This works for any character on this page.
• Windows anywhere: press Windows and full stop to open the emoji panel, then switch to the symbols tab. It includes the text symbols, not only emoji.
• Mac anywhere: press Control, Command and Space for the character viewer, then search the character name.
• Google Docs: Insert, then Special characters, then draw the shape you want. The handwriting search is genuinely the fastest way to find an obscure arrow.
• Anywhere at all: set up a text replacement. On both iOS and macOS you can map a short string such as ;tick to ✓, which beats every other method if you use one daily.

Our guide to typing emoji and symbols on every device has the full keyboard setup for each platform.

The two mistakes that cause the most trouble

First, using the letter x as a cross. It is not centred, it is not balanced against a ✓, and in a table of ticks and crosses the mismatch is obvious at a glance. Use ✗ or ×.

Second, pasting symbols copied from a website with the formatting attached. Many sites wrap their symbols in a span carrying a font and a colour, which travels with the paste into Word or an email and produces a character in a different typeface from everything around it. Paste as plain text, which is Control or Command, Shift and V in nearly every application.

Where to find the rest

There are around a hundred thousand characters in Unicode and only a few hundred are useful for this kind of work. The symbols hub sorts them into sets, with geometric shapes, maths symbols and currency symbols being the next most useful after these. For the picture versions rather than the text ones, the symbol emoji category covers those.

If you are decorating rather than documenting, our heart symbols guide covers the ornamental end of the same character set.