Border & Frame Symbols

Every text border is made of the same six parts: four corners, a piece that runs across and a piece that runs down. The rounded set is ╭ ╮ ╰ ╯ with ─ and │; the square set is ┌ ┐ └ ┘; the heavy set ┏ ┓ ┗ ┛ pairs with ━ and ┃; the double set ╔ ╗ ╚ ╝ pairs with ═ and ║. These all come from the Box Drawing block of Unicode, where each glyph is drawn to touch the edge of its cell, so a corner meets a line with no gap: ╭───╮, ┏━━━┓, ╔═══╗.

Tees and crosses split a frame into a title and a body. ├ and ┤ attach a horizontal rule to the sides, ┬ and ┴ hang a vertical rule from the top or bottom edge, and ┼ joins both: ├───┼───┤. The double set has its own ╠ ╣ ╦ ╩ ╬. Dashed ┄ ┆, dotted ┈ ┊ and two-dash ╌ ╎ lines give a lighter, hand-drawn look and are the pieces behind the most copied bio border of all, ╭┈┈┈ on the first line, ┊ down the left, ╰┈➤ on the last.

Vertical border symbols and side bars

A vertical border is one character at the start of every line. ┊ ┆ and │ are the classic choices for bios and Discord rules; the eighth-blocks ▏ and ▕ sit flush against the text as a thin edge, ▌ and ▐ as a thick one, and ⎸ ⎹ are the box lines from the technical block. The dingbat bars ❘ ❙ ❚ come in three weights, ‖ is a double rule, ¦ a broken one and ｜ a wide one, and ⁞ ⋮ make a dotted edge.

For a bracket that spans several lines, use the pieces mathematicians use to build tall brackets: ⎡ on top, ⎢ on each middle line and ⎣ at the bottom, mirrored by ⎤ ⎥ ⎦. The round set ⎛ ⎜ ⎝ and ⎞ ⎟ ⎠ does the same with a curve. In a proportional font these only line up if every line is the same length, so they are happiest in code blocks and plain-text notes.

Corner symbols and lines that go over and under text

Corner marks frame a word with nothing in between: ⌜ title ⌟ or ⌜ ⌝ above and ⌞ ⌟ below. The four in ⌜ ⌝ ⌞ ⌟ are known as quine corners after the logician W. V. Quine and mark quasi-quotation in logic; ⸢ ⸣ ⸤ ⸥ are the half brackets of scholarly text editions; ⌏ ⌎ ⌍ ⌌ are the printer’s crop marks that show where a page is cut; and ◜ ◝ ◟ ◞ are quarter arcs of a circle, so a round frame can be built from them.

The second family goes above and below the text instead of beside it. ︵ and ︶ are the vertical forms of ( ) made for Chinese and Japanese written top to bottom; set in a horizontal line they read as arcs, which is why ︵‿︵ became the wave of aesthetic bios. ︷ ︸, ︹ ︺ and ︿ ﹀ are the curly, tortoise-shell and angle brackets of the same set, and ⏜ ⏝ ⏞ ⏟ ⏠ ⏡ are their wide mathematical cousins that stretch over a whole word. For straight rules use ‾ over and ＿ under, the hairline edges ▔ ▁, half blocks ▀ ▄, or the dashed and wavy pairs ﹉ ﹍ and ﹋ ﹏.

Ornamental brackets, florettes and name frames

When a border should feel decorative rather than drawn, use the ornaments. ❮ ❯ ❰ ❱ ❬ ❭ and ❨ ❩ are brackets from the Dingbats block, which Unicode took from Hermann Zapf’s ITC Zapf Dingbats typeface of 1978. ꧁ ꧂ are rerenggan, ornamental marks from the Javanese script of Indonesia, and ༺ ༻ are Tibetan brackets; together they make the ꧁༺ name ༻꧂ frame that gamers put around nicknames. 【 】 『 』 and 「 」 are everyday Japanese and Chinese brackets that work as neat, heavy name frames, and ⫷ ⫸ are nested less-than and greater-than signs from maths.

Softer pairs come from far-flung scripts: ꒰ ꒱ are radicals of the Yi script, ୨ ୧ are the digits two and one of the Odia script and read as a little bow, 𓆩 𓆪 are Egyptian hieroglyphs that look like wings, and ᚛ ᚜ are the feather marks that open and close an inscription in the medieval Irish Ogham script. The ends and the middle of a line take florettes ✿ ❀ ❁ ✾, the fancy asterisks ❃ ❊ ❋ ✽, the printers’ hedera ❦ ❧ ☙ and beads like ✦ ✧ ⋆ ◆ ◇ ❖, as in ✿┈┈┈ ❖ ┈┈┈✿. The shadowed squares ❏ ❐ ❑ ❒ and outlines ▢ ⬚ are small frames in themselves, and ✂️ in front of a dotted line makes the classic cut-here border.

Where text borders work, and why a box goes crooked

A closed box with all four sides only lines up where every character has the same width: a Discord or Rentry code block, a terminal, a plain-text README. Instagram, TikTok and ordinary Discord messages use proportional fonts, so a right-hand edge drifts as soon as the lines differ in length. There the open frames win: a top line and a bottom line with nothing at the sides, a bar down the left only, corners at the start of the first line and the end of the last, or an over-and-under pair around a single word.

Lengths matter too. An Instagram bio takes 150 characters, a TikTok bio 80 and an X bio 160, and every border piece counts, so a ten-character ╭┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈╮ is a real cost. To type the square and double pieces on US-English Windows, hold Alt and enter the code on the number pad: Alt+196 ─, Alt+179 │, Alt+218 ┌, Alt+191 ┐, Alt+192 └, Alt+217 ┘, Alt+205 ═, Alt+186 ║, Alt+201 ╔, Alt+187 ╗, Alt+200 ╚, Alt+188 ╝; the rounded corners ╭ ╮ ╰ ╯ have no Alt code, so copy them from here. On a Mac, Control+Command+Space opens the character viewer, where a search for box drawings lists the whole set.