Book emoji meanings: 📚 📖 📕 📗 📘 📙
Books is the book emoji most people mean: a stack of three books, and the shorthand for reading, a to-be-read pile, a library or studying. Open Book is a book being read right now, so it fits "currently reading", a quote, or the idiom I'm an open book when someone means they have nothing to hide. The four single books are the same closed hardback in four covers: Closed Book (red), Green Book, Blue Book and Orange Book. They have no fixed meanings of their own; readers use them one per subject, one per book in a series, or simply pick the colour that matches a post. In the United States doubles for the blue exam booklet and the Kelley Blue Book of car prices, which is why "blue book emoji meaning" is such a common search.
All six books, together with Notebook, Notebook with Decorative Cover (a journal or diary), Ledger (an account book), Bookmark, Scroll and Newspaper, were part of the first big emoji release in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, inherited from the Japanese carrier sets. Rolled-Up Newspaper came later, in Unicode 7.0 (2014). has grown a second life as the "save for later" sign: the save button on Instagram and the Bookmarks feature on X both use a bookmark-shaped ribbon, so in a caption often means "save this post" rather than a physical bookmark. Bookmark Tabs are the sticky tabs that annotators stick out of a paperback, and are single pages for a chapter, a manuscript or a printout.
Reading emoji: the reader, the bookworm and the reading nook
There is no person-reading emoji in Unicode, so the reader is built from parts. Nerd Face (Unicode 8.0, 2015) is the face people reach for first: proud bookworm, studying, "well, actually". Face with Monocle is the scholarly, suspicious reader, Glasses are reading glasses, and stand for the thinking a book sets off. There is no bookworm emoji either, so the word is drawn with Worm (Emoji 13.0, 2020) or Bug next to a book: or . Owl is the night owl who reads until two in the morning, and Flashlight with or is the oldest reading joke there is, one more chapter under the covers after lights out, usually ending in .
The cozy reading nook is its own small vocabulary, and it is what most "book emoji aesthetic" searches are after: Couch and Lamp or Chair for the seat, Candle for the light, Window with for rain against the glass, for the drink and for the snack, for whatever shares the blanket. make it an autumn read, a winter one by the fire, and a late one. A classic three-emoji caption is ; the longer version reads as a whole evening. Keep the palette warm and brown ( ) and a reading account looks deliberate rather than busy.
BookTok and Goodreads: book emoji combos by genre and mood
On BookTok, Bookstagram and Goodreads, emoji do the work of genre labels. Fantasy is ; mystery and thriller are ; horror is ; science fiction is ; romance is . Romance readers also rate heat with Hot Pepper, one to five peppers, so in a review tells you exactly what kind of book it is without a word. Classics, history and the author side of things take ; annotating is ; an audiobook is and an e-reader is . A book club is , and a library, which has no emoji of its own, is Classical Building or simply .
Reactions are the other half of a review. for a book you loved, for one that hurt, for a twist, for a funny one, for a slow or confusing one. Ratings are repeated ( for a five-star read), for a favourite of the year, and for finishing a book or a Goodreads reading challenge. The common sequence in a BookTok caption is genre, then book, then feeling: , or . Two or three emoji at the end of a review say more than a row of ten.
Book symbols as text: ⁂ ¶ † and the pointing hand
If you want a book symbol that takes the colour of your font, in a bio, a username, a Notion page or a plain-text reading log, use the text characters rather than the colour emoji. Book comes from the old Wingdings font and joined Unicode in version 7.0 (2014); it draws as a simple outline book on most systems. The ornaments printers used to decorate books are also here: Floral Heart and its turned forms are the hedera or fleuron, an ivy-leaf mark that goes back to Greek and Roman inscriptions and still separates sections in novels, and ⁂ Asterism, three asterisks in a triangle, marks a break between scenes.
The marks of the printed page work the same way: ¶ Pilcrow for a paragraph, § Section Sign for a section, † Dagger and ‡ Double Dagger for footnotes (the traditional order of footnote marks is *, †, ‡, §), and … Ellipsis for a trailing thought or a cut quotation. are the manicule, the little pointing hand readers drew in the margins of manuscripts and early printed books to mark a passage worth returning to; it still makes a good "read this" arrow in a caption. Lines like currently reading or ⁂ tbr ⁂ sit well in a bio where emoji would look loud.
How to type book emoji on iPhone, Android and desktop
On an iPhone or Android phone, open the emoji keyboard and type book in the search field: all appear, and read or nerd brings up . On Windows press the Windows key and the full stop together, on a Mac press Control, Command and Space, then search the same way. In Slack, Discord and GitHub the shortcodes are :books: for , :book: for , :closed_book:, :green_book:, :blue_book:, :orange_book:, :notebook:, :bookmark: and :nerd_face:.
The text symbols ⁂ ¶ § † have no keyboard shortcut on phones, so copy them from this page; on a Mac the Character Viewer (Control, Command, Space) finds them by name, and on Windows the Character Map does. Every platform draws the book emoji in its own style, so may be a flat stack on one phone and books standing in a row on another, but the meaning carries across. For the writing side of this topic, pens, notebooks and journals, see Writing & Note-Taking Emoji; for exams and classrooms, School & Study Emoji; for coffee on its own, Coffee & Tea Emoji.
Symbols
119Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Book emoji
Every book, notebook and page emoji, the stack first.
The reader
There is no person-reading emoji; these are the parts.
Cozy reading nook
The book emoji aesthetic: seat, light, drink, snack, weather.
Genres and the reading life
How BookTok and Goodreads label a book.
How the book left you
Reactions and ratings for reviews.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyBook & Reading Emoji combos
15Worth knowing
- World Book Day is 23 April, the date UNESCO chose because both Cervantes and Shakespeare are recorded as dying on 23 April 1616. In Catalonia it coincides with Sant Jordi, when people give each other a book and a rose, which makes the day's emoji.
- Unicode has no person-reading emoji and no bookworm emoji. Worm only arrived in 2020 (Emoji 13.0), and bookworms promptly put it next to .
- In 2024 a ten-year-old boy in England started a campaign to redesign Nerd Face, arguing its buck teeth and glasses mocked people who wear glasses; he proposed a "genius" face instead. The emoji has not changed.
- is the hedera, Latin for ivy. It is one of the oldest punctuation marks still in use: Greek and Roman stonecutters used it to separate words and phrases long before it became a printer's ornament.
- the manicule was drawn by hand in book margins for centuries as a personal "note this" mark; Unicode kept it as the pointing hands , and Book came in through the Wingdings font in 2014.
Questions people ask
8How do I copy and paste book emoji?
Tap or click any emoji in the grid above, such as , or , and it is copied. Paste it into TikTok, Instagram, Goodreads, WhatsApp or your notes with CtrlV, CmdV or a long-press.
Is there a book emoji?
Yes, several: Books (a stack), Open Book, and the single closed books in red, green, blue and orange, plus notebooks and Bookmark. All of them date from Unicode 6.0 in 2010.
What does the book emoji mean?
means reading, studying, a pile of books to read or a library. means a book being read right now, or figuratively "I'm an open book". The coloured books have no special meanings; people choose them by colour or use one per subject.
What does the book emoji mean from a guy?
Almost always the literal thing: he is reading, studying or busy with exams. can be a hint that he has nothing to hide, as in "I'm an open book". It is not a slang code, so read it with the rest of the message.
Is there a bookworm emoji?
No. Bookworms write it with Worm or Bug next to a book: or . Nerd Face is the face version.
Is there a reading emoji?
There is no person-reading emoji in Unicode. Use on its own, pair it with a face (, ), or show the scene: reading in bed, reading on the couch, an audiobook. There is no library emoji either: Classical Building stands for one, and together is unambiguous.
What are good book emoji combos for BookTok?
Name the genre and the mood: fantasy, mystery, spicy romance, horror, a cozy read, a sad one, a five-star read. Three or four emoji read better than ten.
What is the book symbol text?
is the text book symbol, a Wingdings character added to Unicode in 2014. For bookish text decoration there are also fleurons, ⁂ asterism, ¶ pilcrow, § section sign, † ‡ daggers and the pointing hand; all are plain text and take your font's colour.
