Occasionally I've seen the symbol "plus or minus" written in fractional form, like this:
Is there a Unicode character for this?
Note: I already know about the standard "plus-minus sign" symbol, but it won't work in this context. I'm specifically looking for a version with the fraction bar.
You can approximate it to some extent with a superscript plus (U+207A), a division slash (U+2215) and a subscript minus (U+208B):
⁺∕₋
However, it requires font support to get right. Especially the super- and subscript +/− are not available in most fonts, so it might just render horribly.
For reference, that's how it looks for me (better than five years ago, but still somewhat broken):
However, using Cambria Math in Word 2010 it looks like this:
Which probably is exactly how it should look like (follows the same typesetting rules as fractions).
This is the only one I have seen in unicode (plus over minus):
±
HTML/XML Character reference:
±
HTML Named Entity:
±
This symbol is used to indicate the precision of an approximation.
You mean like ± (U+00B1 / "\x00b1")?
Edit: speaking specifically to a design which uses a solidus, the best I could find was ⁺⁄₋ which is U+207a (superscript plus sign) U+2044 (fraction slash) U+208b (subscript minus). The fraction slash has negative kerning in some fonts, which causes the appearance of composition. See this JSFiddle for an example of how this works with a larger font size.
<div style="font-size:20em;">⁺⁄₋</div>
+⁄−
<sup>+</sup>⁄<sub>−</sub>
In UTF-8: 0xC2 0xB1
For other encodings see:
http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/b1/index.htm
Related
While dealing with unicode encoded characters in Java, I used Normalizer to normalize it and convert it to a String. Below is the code I used:
input = "¼";
input = Normalizer.normalize(input,Normalizer.Form.NFKD);
output: 1⁄4.
The forward slash that the method used was "⁄" whose unicode encoding is \u2044 as opposed to the regular forward slash that I am able to type using my keyboard which is "/" encoded as \u002f.
What is the difference between these and when should one be used over another?
Thanks in advance.
Rishit
Unicode these days contains heaps of variations of the common non-letter characters, and slashes are no exception. (That's not even all of them - search for "solidus" to get some more.) You've got fraction slashes (your one), full-width slashes, division slashes (yup, that's separate from the fraction one), thick slashes, extra-thick slashes - the list goes on.
The good news is you get to decide what slash is appropriate for your context.
If you're wanting to normalise just because you don't want fractions to appear squashed into a single character, or you want all fractions to display identically (unicode obviously can't have a character for every possible fraction) then using this fraction slash is probably what you want to go with.
On the other hand, if you want to normalise because you want to reduce the set of available characters to those that can be easily typed on a standard keyboard, it's likely the standard forward slash you should go with.
As Michael Berry mentioned, \u2044 is the fraction slash character.
It isn’t just a slash that looks a little different; it has specific rendering behavior. From the Unicode specification, section 6.2, “Other Punctuation”:
Fraction Slash. U+2044 FRACTION SLASH is used between digits to form numeric fractions, such as 2/3 and 3/9. The standard form of a fraction built using the fraction slash is defined as follows: any sequence of one or more decimal digits (General Category = Nd), followed by the fraction slash, followed by any sequence of one or more decimal digits. Such a fraction should be displayed as a unit, such as ³⁄₄ or . The precise choice of display can depend on additional formatting information.
If the displaying software is incapable of mapping the fraction to a unit, then it can also be displayed as a simple linear sequence as a fallback (for example, 3/4). If the fraction is to be separated from a previous number, then a space can be used, choosing the appropriate width (normal, thin, zero width, and so on). For example, 1 + THIN SPACE + 3 + FRACTION SLASH + 4 is displayed as 1 ³⁄₄.
Personally, I prefer the use of the fraction slash, as it makes fractions look better, like they’re professionally typeset. But there are some contexts where an ASCII slash is better, such as monospaced text, or wanting all-ASCII output, or as Michael mentioned, limiting text to characters which can be typed on a keyboard.
I learned today that while common fractions have dedicated Unicode values, in order to form less common fractions like ³/₁₆ you have to use superscript/subscript characters followed by a slash. This is confirmed here and here.
This works for ¹¹/₁₆ and ¹³/₁₆, but it gets messed up with ¹⁵/₁₆. Do you see how the 5 rises higher than the one? I imagine this is because in order to show the number 5 clearly as a superscript, it requires more height than 1 and 3.
Well, that creates a problem. How do you display the fraction 15/16 nicely as Unicode characters? Unfortunately I can't use the sup and sub tags. I'm not displaying it in an HTML page. Rather, we're passing a string to a Java application that will then render these values. I know it renders Unicode values fine, but it wouldn't recognize HTML tags. Is there a Unicode solution?
The “proper” way of composing arbitrary vulgar fractions in Unicode is to not use the subscript and superscript digits at all, but to utilise the special properties of the character U+2044 FRACTION SLASH. You would simply type the regular ASCII digits and separate them with the slash like so: 15⁄16. The rendering engine will then automatically select the correct forms of the numbers, producing a clean, uniform look.
I put the word ‘proper’ in quotation marks because this method is not guaranteed to be supported on all systems, and some that do support it do so incorrectly or incompletely. If you absolutely need to make sure that 100% of recipients regardless of system will definitely see something that looks more or less right, I would therefore still (begrudgingly) recommend using the preformatted subscripts and superscripts as a substitute. As the other answer explained, the problem you are having is a font issue and cannot be solved if you do not have control over font settings.
This is indeed a font issue, however the problem arises from the fact that, in Unicode, ¹, ², and ³ belong to the Latin-1 Supplement block, while the other superscript digits belong to the Superscripts and Subscripts block, and some font substitution occurs.
Please see Why the display of Unicode characters for superscripted digits are not at the same height? for extra details; it is tagged as iOS, but I have the same problem on macOS too.
I found this site, Unicode Fraction Creator: https://lights0123.com/fractions/
Here's an example: ³⁄₂
Which is:
U+00B3 superscript three
U+2044 fraction slash
U+2082 subscript two
For a general answer on displaying fractions nicely, copy, paste, and change.
ASCII Characters
Name
hexadecimal value
⁄
Fraction Slash
8260
0
digit 0
48
1
digit 1
49
2
digit 2
50
3
digit 3
51
4
digit 4
52
5
digit 5
53
6
digit 6
54
7
digit 7
55
8
digit 8
56
9
digit 9
57
example: 1/0 =
1⁄0
I am looking for large symbols in unicode like these:
∏ ∐ ∑ ∫
⨀ ⨁ ⨂
⊕ ⊖ ⊗ ⊘ ⊙
⎲
⎳
⌠
⌡
The only one I found is by combining two unicode symbols ⎲and ⎳. Not sure why that exists, but not a large product symbol. That's all I am really looking for (∏ over multiple lines like the sigma). If any of the other ones exist over 2 lines that would be great to know as well. Perhaps there is some way to manually make the large ∏ symbol out of smaller primitives.
⎲and ⎳. Not sure why that exists
When a collection of existing glyphs is added to Unicode, it is desirable to make encoding between character sets round-trip safe. So glyphs that are duplicates or variants of each other are kept anyway.
As of Unicode 10, these are the greek letter pi (and its compat decompositions) available: ∏Ππϖᴨℼℿ There are no top and bottom halves like for integral and summation.
You should not attempt to build a glyph piecewise from other glyphs shifted into position. (You said "primitives", but Unicode does not work that way.) The result is not accessible and somewhat likely to break in rendering on systems other than yours.
The correct solution is to use the ∏ glyph and simply scale up its font size. Look into MathML if you are using only ad-hoc notation so far.
I have to display $CₓH\subscript{y}$.
Is there any chance to display a subscripted 'y' in Unicode?
\u2093 represents the subscripted 'x'
Usually you do this with formatting. Unicode's selection of superscript and subscript characters doesn't stem from the need or desire to cover whole alphabets but rather to enable specific use cases, e.g. writing IPA. Furthermore, if you're using a good OpenType font it can also support proper subscripts for arbitrary characters at the font level (where a glyph isn't simply scaled down by the layout engine, but rather a specifically-designed subscript glyph from the font is used).
In fact, since you're already using TeX or something vaguely similar to it, just let one of the many implementations render it. There are lots of things you simply cannot do in plain text without formatting, and this is one of them.
The subscript and superscript characters in Unicode do not cover the whole alphabet.
See the Wiki article on this topic or this answer on SO.
In Sublime Text this subscripted y works: ᵧ. Copied from here: https://lingojam.com/SubscriptGenerator
EDIT This is actually the greek letter gamma
ASCII has versions of the whole Roman alphabet. I was surprised recently to learn that Unicode contains other version/s of those same characters. One example is "U+1D5C4: MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF SMALL K", or "𝗄".
Can't LaTeX math mode, or MS Word equation editor, or whatever other program just use a sans-serif font if it wants the letters in a mathematical formula to be sans-serif?
These characters exist so that the semantic distinction between them can be encoded in plain text, or where the specific font shape can't be controlled.
The block you mention is only intended for use in mathematical and technical contexts, where the distinction between, say, 𝑑 as a variable vs. d as a differential operator vs. 𝖽 as an object (in category theory) is important. TR #25 gives another example where losing the distinction between ℋ and H can completely change the meaning of an equation. Being able to encode this formatting into the text itself is also important for ISO 31-11.
All of these characters maintain compatibility mappings with their "normal" Latin and Greek counterparts, so the distinction between them should not affect searching and sorting.
You are confusing the display mode with the encoding for texts.
The idea is that unicode has ALL the symbols used to write known to mankind grouped by usage. That's why you will find many code-points that look alike.
So a formula with a k is different is supposed to be different then a word written with a k. The sans-serif part is just a description of the kind of k best used to display. Tomorrow somebody might want to add a serif k and then how would you describe the difference?