You’ve probably seen combined characters before, like the acute accent combination in “Pokémon,” or the umlaut combination in the German word “schön.” The “no symbol” ⃠ itself is categorized in Unicode as a “combining character,” meaning it’s designed to overlay the preceding character. Unicode provides a standard way to represent text in multiple languages, symbols, and emoji by assigning each character - emoji included - a unique identification number that can be displayed by the font installed on your device.įor the officially designated “international prohibition sign,” that identification number is U+20E0. Its members include individuals as well as major corporations like Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
The reason you can see symbols like the “no sign” ⃠, your favorite emoji, accents in a French city name, or Japanese kanji on an online storefront, is the Unicode Standard, created by the Unicode Consortium.
