What ✬ means
No fixed meaning; it is a typographic ornament.
It belongs to the Unicode Dingbats block, a set of printers' ornaments and practical marks based on ITC Zapf Dingbats, a symbol font the German type designer Hermann Zapf drew in 1978. Its official name simply describes the drawing: a white (outlined) star with a black centre. It sits in a little run of star designs, ✬ , that differ only in which parts are filled or outlined.
In a post, bio or document it decorates: it marks list items, separates sections or frames a name. Stars in general suggest something highlighted or special, and any such sense comes from the words around it; ✬ is not a rating or a grade.
Why does it look different on my screen?
Your font draws it, and fonts disagree.
Some fonts fill the centre with a small black star, others with a dot or a pentagon, and the outline can be thin or bold. If no font on the device has the character, you see an empty box or question mark instead. Because it is a plain text symbol, there is no colourful emoji version.
Neutral and decorative; it dresses up text and leaves the message to the words.
On devices without a suitable font it can arrive as an empty box.
Part of collections
Don't confuse it with
3
Related characters
3
Combination ideas
3Worth knowing
- Hermann Zapf, who drew the font this star comes from, also designed the typefaces Palatino and Optima.
Questions people ask
3Is ✬ an emoji?
No. It is a text symbol, so it shows in your font's colour and has no emoji picture.
Is ✬ the same as ?
No. ✬ is an outlined star with a black centre; is a black star with a white centre. They are separate characters.
Why do I see a box instead of the star?
Your device has no font containing it. Installing a broad symbol font or switching font usually fixes it.
More like this
12
Collections with ✬
2
How to type or find ✬
- Search it as
- star with black centre · decorative star · star dingbat · outlined star · star bullet · Zapf Dingbats
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
✬\272CCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.