Symbol

Due to its non-standard character set, lack of diacritical characters, and type design inappropriate for continuous text, Symbol cannot easily be used for setting Greek language text, though it has been used for that purpose in the absence of proper Greek fonts. Its primary purpose is to typeset mathematical expressions.

• Name — Symbol • Style — Serif • Classifications — * 1= • Transitional

• Name — Symbol Encoding • Alias — x-mac-symbol, ibm-1038 • Definitions — Adobe Symbol Mac OS Symbol • Lang — Mathematical notation, Greek (partial) • Otherrelated — ISO 646 Other PS pi fonts: Zapf Dingbats • Classification — PostScript core pi font mapped over extended ASCII The font was created by Adobe and has its own character encoding, with the Greek letters arranged according to similar Latin letters (Chi = C, etc.). The document describing the mapping to Unicode code points was created before several of the characters were added to Unicode, so the original mapping assigns several of the characters to the Private Use Area (PUA). A newer mapping table for Apple's version of the font uses more recently introduced Unicode code points instead. The table below mostly follows the Apple mapping. IBM calls the encoding Code page 1038, although the code page definition predates the addition of the euro sign, and uses 0xA0 for a numeric space character. Beyond the use of Private Use Area code points, Adobe and Apple have a few other minor differences in code point assignments. Character 0x27 (called "suchthat" in the Adobe document) is assigned by Adobe to U+220B (∋, CONTAINS AS MEMBER) but by Apple to U+220D (∍, SMALL CONTAINS AS MEMBER), which more closely resembles the symbol usually used for such that. Apple also introduces the Apple logo as PUA code point U+F8FF for character 0xF0, a position not used in the original Adobe font. Lowercase Greek letters appear in italics in many older versions of Symbol. While both Adobe and Apple agree on assigning characters 0x66 and 0x6A respectively to Unicode code points GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI and GREEK PHI SYMBOL, some versions of the font interchange these two symbols. Mapping of the angle bracket characters at 0xE1 and 0xF1 can vary. Adobe uses code points U+2329 and U+232A, whereas Apple uses U+3008 and U+3009 (〈 and 〉). The characters U+3008 and U+3009 are fullwidth punctuation, usually rendered with additional spacing so as to align them within em squares, as appropriate in East Asian typography. The characters U+2329 and U+232A, however, are canonically equivalent to U+3008 and U+3009, and are therefore changed to the latter under both NFC and NFKC Unicode normalisation. This equivalence is sometimes considered mistaken, but cannot be changed under the Unicode stability policy. For comparison, the fullwidth Latin characters in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block are mapped to their ASCII equivalents using compatibility mapping, not canonical equivalence, and therefore only changed by NFKC and NFKD normalisation. The alternatives U+27E8 and U+27E9 (⟨ and ⟩) are now preferred for mathematical use. Symbol (typeface) • U+0021 EXCLAMATION MARK — U+2203 THERE EXISTS — U+220D SMALL CONTAINS AS MEMBER — U+0028 LEFT PARENTHESIS — U+0029 RIGHT PARENTHESIS — U+2217 ASTERISK OPERATOR — U+2212 MINUS SIGN • U+0030 DIGIT ZERO — U+0031 DIGIT ONE — U+0032 DIGIT TWO — U+0033 DIGIT THREE — U+0034 DIGIT FOUR — U+0035 DIGIT FIVE — U+0036 DIGIT SIX — U+0037 DIGIT SEVEN — U+0038 DIGIT EIGHT — U+0039 DIGIT NINE • U+03A6 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER PHI — U+0397 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ETA • U+03A1 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER RHO — U+03A4 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER TAU — U+2234 THEREFORE — U+22A5 UP TACK • U+203E OVERLINE — U+03C6 GREEK SMALL LETTER PHI — U+03B7 GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA • U+03C1 GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO — U+03C4 GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU • U+03D2 GREEK UPSILON WITH HOOK SYMBOL — U+2032 PRIME — U+2044 FRACTION SLASH — U+221E INFINITY — U+0192 LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK — U+2663 BLACK CLUB SUIT — U+2666 BLACK DIAMOND SUIT — U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT — U+2660 BLACK SPADE SUIT — U+2194 LEFT RIGHT ARROW • U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN — U+2033 DOUBLE PRIME — U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN — U+221D PROPORTIONAL TO — U+2202 PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL — U+2022 BULLET — U+00F7 DIVISION SIGN — U+2260 NOT EQUAL TO — U+2248 ALMOST EQUAL TO — U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS — U+23D0 VERTICAL LINE EXTENSION — U+23AF HORIZONTAL LINE EXTENSION • U+2135 ALEF SYMBOL — U+2111 BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL I — U+211C BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL R — U+2118 SCRIPT CAPITAL P — U+2297 CIRCLED TIMES — U+2205 EMPTY SET — U+2229 INTERSECTION — U+222A UNION — U+2283 SUPERSET OF — U+2287 SUPERSET OF OR EQUAL TO — U+2284 NOT A SUBSET OF — U+2282 SUBSET OF — U+2286 SUBSET OF OR EQUAL TO — U+2208 ELEMENT OF — U+2209 NOT AN ELEMENT OF • U+2220 ANGLE — U+2207 NABLA — U+00AE REGISTERED SIGN — U+00A9 COPYRIGHT SIGN — U+2122 TRADE MARK SIGN — U+220F N-ARY PRODUCT — U+221A SQUARE ROOT — U+22C5 DOT OPERATOR — U+00AC NOT SIGN — U+2227 LOGICAL AND — U+2228 LOGICAL OR — U+21D4 LEFT RIGHT DOUBLE ARROW — U+21D0 LEFTWARDS DOUBLE ARROW — U+21D1 UPWARDS DOUBLE ARROW — U+21D2 RIGHTWARDS DOUBLE ARROW — U+21D3 DOWNWARDS DOUBLE ARROW • U+25CA LOZENGE — U+3008 LEFT ANGLE BRACKET — U+2211 N-ARY SUMMATION — U+239B LEFT PARENTHESIS UPPER HOOK — U+239C LEFT PARENTHESIS EXTENSION — U+239D LEFT PARENTHESIS LOWER HOOK — U+23A1 LEFT SQUARE BRACKET UPPER CORNER — U+23A2 LEFT SQUARE BRACKET EXTENSION — U+23A3 LEFT SQUARE BRACKET LOWER CORNER — U+23A7 LEFT CURLY BRACKET UPPER HOOK — U+23A8 LEFT CURLY BRACKET MIDDLE PIECE — U+23A9 LEFT CURLY BRACKET LOWER HOOK — U+23AA CURLY BRACKET EXTENSION • U+3009 RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET — U+222B INTEGRAL — U+2320 TOP HALF INTEGRAL — U+23AE INTEGRAL EXTENSION — U+2321 BOTTOM HALF INTEGRAL — U+239E RIGHT PARENTHESIS UPPER HOOK — U+239F RIGHT PARENTHESIS EXTENSION — U+23A0 RIGHT PARENTHESIS LOWER HOOK — U+23A4 RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET UPPER CORNER — U+23A5 RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET EXTENSION — U+23A6 RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET LOWER CORNER — U+23AB RIGHT CURLY BRACKET UPPER HOOK — U+23AC RIGHT CURLY BRACKET MIDDLE PIECE — U+23AD RIGHT CURLY BRACKET LOWER HOOK

The use of the Symbol font in mathematical expressions was part of a W3C recommendation for HTML 4. At the time of that original recommendation (December 1997), the only native way to display many mathematical symbols in HTML was a direct use of the "Symbol" font. Such explicit references are now strongly discouraged for new documents, but they survive in many existing pages on the Internet. Also, the Symbol font provides graphics that are specifically intended as components in the two-dimensional layout of mathematical expressions. Examples include upper and lower parts of brackets or integral signs and a square-root sign without a vinculum (overline). Until 2010 or so, the Unicode glyph U+221A corresponding to the square-root sign (the HTML entity is named radic and has decimal code 8730) was usually rendered with a short built-in vinculum. That made it an inadequate graphical replacement for the original character from the Symbol font (itself designed around a slanted line extending all the way to the upper-right corner of the character box, without any spacing). The more recent renditions of the HTML radic entity (U+221A) no longer feature any vinculum and are thus more compatible with the standard graphical representation introduced in the Symbol font. Both styles of the square-root glyph (with or without a short vinculum) have the same disembodied meaning, so the integrity of the Unicode repertoire is not compromised by this adjustment. Full legacy support of the Symbol font is provided by major modern web browsers like Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. That support involves a specific handling of Adobe's special encoding, which is not properly implemented in at least some versions of other browsers, including Opera, Safari and Firefox. Such browsers do not correctly render legacy HTML documents that make explicit use of the Symbol font.