Box drawing characters and how the set fits together
Every piece in the Box Drawing block (U2500 to U257F, all 128 of them in Unicode since version 1.0 in 1991) is a line drawn from the centre of a character cell to one or more of its four edges. Name the edges and you have named the character: is down and right, is vertical and left, is vertical and horizontal. Because every line runs exactly to the edge, a placed next to a meets it with no gap, and a column of stacks into one unbroken rule.
The block repeats the same eleven shapes in several styles. Light ( ) is the everyday thin line. Heavy ( ) is the same set drawn thick. Double ( ) draws two parallel hairlines and is the look of old DOS program windows. The four rounded corners have no lines or tees of their own; they borrow the light and , which is why they sit in the corner columns only.
The rest of the block is joints between styles. and their siblings connect single verticals to double horizontals (and the other way round), so you can draw a double frame around a table with single inner rules. The forty-odd mixed light-and-heavy pieces ( …) do the same for a thick border around thin rules. The half lines stop in the middle of the cell, which makes clean line ends and the stems of text arrows, and let a line change from thin to thick mid-run.
Line symbols: dashed, diagonal and the plain bars
The dashed lines come in two, three and four dashes per cell: across and down, with heavy versions and . Repeated, reads as a dotted divider and is the vertical dotted bar that Discord server owners put in front of channel names. The three diagonals are drawn corner to corner, so makes a zigzag and a lattice.
People searching for line symbols usually also want the plain bars that live elsewhere in Unicode, so they are here too: the keyboard pipe , the broken bar , the double vertical line ‖, the fullwidth bar used in Japanese and Chinese text, and the thin edge lines from the Block Elements, which hug one side of the cell. For a horizontal rule the underscore _, the double low line ‗, the overline ‾ and the macron sit at the bottom, top and cap height respectively. The corner marks are small quotation corners that frame a word without touching it.
A box line is not a dash. fills the whole cell width and is meant to connect; the em dash — is punctuation with its own spacing and sits lower in many fonts. If a divider made of em dashes shows tiny gaps, swap them for or . The full set of dashes is in Dash & Hyphen Symbols, and ready-made dividers are in Bullet Point & Divider Symbols.
Where box drawing characters came from
Line pieces predate Unicode by two decades. The teletext standard of 1976 used mosaic characters to draw on television screens, and the DEC VT100 terminal of 1978 carried a special graphics set that programs switched on with the escape sequence Esc ( 0 to draw menus and frames. The original IBM PC (1981) built the single and double lines into its hardware character set, later known as code page 437, and every DOS program with a bordered window drew it from those forty pieces.
Unicode gathered all of these into one block in 1991, adding the heavy and dashed forms that East Asian character sets had used for tables. Some pieces never made it everywhere: code page 850, the Western European DOS set, dropped the mixed single-and-double joints such as to make room for accented letters, so programs that used them drew broken boxes on those machines. The diagonal pieces from teletext and 1980s home computers arrived much later, in Unicode 13 (2020), inside the Symbols for Legacy Computing block.
Today the characters live on wherever text is all you have: terminal programs, tree listings (the tree command and npm ls both draw and ), tables in source-code comments and README files, Discord layouts and text art. In a graphical document they are rarely needed, since a word processor can draw a real border.
How to type box drawing characters
The quickest way is to copy from the grid above: tap a piece to copy it, or open its page for the code point and name. The combos further down are ready-made box tops, bottoms and tree branches to paste whole.
On Windows, the classic Alt codes work for the code page 437 subset: hold Alt and type on the numeric keypad Alt196 , Alt179 , Alt218 , Alt191 , Alt192 , Alt217 , Alt195 , Alt180 , Alt194 , Alt193 , Alt197 , and for double lines Alt205 , Alt186 , Alt201 , Alt187 , Alt200 , Alt188 , Alt204 , Alt185 , Alt203 , Alt202 , Alt206 . Heavy and rounded pieces have no Alt code; in Word you can type the hex code such as 256D and press AltX to get .
On a Mac, open the Character Viewer with ControlCommandSpace and search for box drawings; on Linux most desktops accept CtrlShiftU, the hex code (2500 for ) and a space. The Box Drawing block is contiguous, so the code points are easy to remember: U2500 to U257F, light lines first, then heavy, dashed, corners, tees, crosses, doubles, rounded corners, diagonals and half lines.
Why box drawing characters do not line up
The pieces are designed for monospaced fonts, where every character cell is the same width and height, so the line ends meet. In a proportional font (the default in a chat message, a tweet or a web form) a is narrower than a and the box top runs out before the box bottom. On Discord, put multi-line boxes and tables inside a code block (three backticks) and they align; single-line dividers and channel-name prefixes like are fine anywhere.
Fonts vary in coverage. Nearly every font has the light and double pieces that were in the old IBM PC set; heavy, dashed and mixed-weight joints are missing from some, and the Unicode 13 diagonal pieces at the end of this page appear only in fonts made for terminals or retro computing. If a row shows an empty rectangle, the font is the reason, not the character.
Line thickness also differs between fonts: a light line may look bold in one terminal and hairline in another, and the gap between the two strokes of a double line is a font choice too. If a drawing has to look the same everywhere, keep to the light and double sets.
Simboli
166Fai clic su un simbolo per copiarlo e aprire la sua pagina.
Lines, corners, tees and crosses in every style
Each column is one piece; each row one line style. Mix within a row and every joint meets.
Dashed and dotted lines
Two, three or four dashes per cell. Repeat one character for a dotted divider.
Single and double lines mixed
For a double frame with single inner rules, or the other way round.
Light and heavy lines mixed
Joints where a thin line meets a thick one, for a heavy frame around light table rules.
Half lines
A line that stops in the middle of the cell: line ends, stubs and arrow stems.
Line symbols from outside the block
Plain bars, underlines and corner marks people reach for alongside box drawing.
How to use them
6 situationsFai clic per copiareBox Drawing Characters combos
20Da sapere
- The whole Box Drawing block, all 128 characters, has been in Unicode since version 1.0 in 1991; nothing has been added to it since, which is why the newer diagonal pieces had to go into a separate Symbols for Legacy Computing block in 2020.
- The DEC VT100 terminal of 1978 kept its line pieces in a separate graphics character set that programs switched on with Esc ( 0 and off with Esc ( B, so a lowercase q printed in that mode came out as .
- The original IBM PC character set, code page 437, had forty box pieces, but the Western European code page 850 dropped the mixed single-and-double joints ( ) to fit accented letters, so DOS programs that used them drew broken frames abroad.
- Many fonts contain only the box pieces that were in the IBM PC set, because that subset is part of the WGL4 character list Microsoft asked font makers to cover in the 1990s; heavy and dashed lines are the ones most often missing.
- The names tell you the shape: every piece is named by the edges its lines reach, so BOX DRAWINGS LIGHT DOWN AND RIGHT is , and the mouthful BOX DRAWINGS RIGHT HEAVY AND LEFT VERTICAL LIGHT is , a light cross whose right arm is thick.
Domande frequenti
8How do I copy and paste box drawing characters?
Tap any piece in the grid above and it is copied. The combos section has finished box tops, bottoms, table rows and tree branches to paste in one go. In a chat app, paste multi-line boxes inside a code block so the columns stay aligned.
What are box drawing characters?
They are 128 Unicode characters (U2500 to U257F) made of straight lines running from the centre of a character cell to its edges: for lines, for corners, for tees and for a cross, in light, heavy, double, dashed and rounded styles. Placed side by side in a monospaced font they join into boxes, tables and tree diagrams.
What are the alt codes for box drawing characters?
Hold Alt and type on the numeric keypad: 196 , 179 , 218 , 191 , 192 , 217 , 195 , 180 , 194 , 193 , 197 ; double lines 205 , 186 , 201 , 187 , 200 , 188 , 204 , 185 , 203 , 202 , 206 . These are the old IBM PC codes, so heavy, dashed and rounded pieces have none; copy those from this page or type the hex code and AltX in Word.
Why don't my box drawing characters line up?
The font is proportional, so and have different widths and the rows drift. Switch to a monospaced font, or on Discord, Slack and GitHub put the drawing in a code block. Also check that every row has the same number of characters, counting spaces.
How do I make a box with text symbols?
Take one style and use its four corners, two lines and, for inner rules, its tees and cross. Light: / / . Double: / / . Rounded: / / . Make the top and bottom the same length and pad each middle line with spaces to the same width.
What is the difference between and —?
is a box drawing line: it fills the whole character cell so neighbouring pieces connect, and it is centred on the line of text. — is the em dash, a punctuation mark with its own width and position that leaves tiny gaps when repeated. Use or for dividers and frames, — for sentences.
Is there a box drawing characters generator?
This page works as one: the grid holds every piece by shape and style, the combos are prebuilt box edges and table rows, and the rules in the article tell you which pieces join. For a frame around multi-line text, build the top and bottom rows from the combos and copy or for the sides.
How do I use box drawing characters on Discord?
Single pieces go anywhere: server owners name channels ・welcome, ・rules, ・roles because spaces are not allowed in channel names, and or make dividers in messages and bios. Whole boxes and tables belong inside a code block, where Discord uses a monospaced font and the lines meet.
