Shape Symbols & Emoji

Most text shapes live in one Unicode block called Geometric Shapes (U+25A0 to U+25FF), part of Unicode since version 1.1 in 1993. Its 96 characters cover the shapes you meet every day: ■ □ ▲ △ ▼ ▽ ◆ ◇ ● ○ ◉ ◎ and their small and half-filled versions. Because the block is so old, almost every font on every device has it, which is why ■ ● ▲ paste safely into usernames, spreadsheets, chat and code.

Unicode names shapes by fill, not by colour on screen: black means filled (■ BLACK SQUARE, ● BLACK CIRCLE, ▲ BLACK UP-POINTING TRIANGLE) and white means hollow (□ WHITE SQUARE, ○ WHITE CIRCLE, △ WHITE UP-POINTING TRIANGLE). The actual colour is whatever your text is set to, so ■ in a red heading is a red square.

Later blocks filled the gaps. Pentagons ⬟ ⬠, hexagons ⬡ ⬢ ⬣, the large circle ⬤ and ovals ⬭ ⬬ were added in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows block (⬟ in Unicode 5.1, 2008), and the Geometric Shapes Extended block of Unicode 7.0 (2014) brought squares, circles and diamonds in graded sizes and stroke weights (🞌 🞍 🞎 🞏 🞐 🞑, 🞄 🞅 🞆 🞇) so that Wingdings and Webdings documents could be converted to Unicode. Octagons ⯃ ⯄ and the centred shapes ⯀ ⯁ ⯅ came with the same release.

Shape emoji: coloured circles, squares, diamonds and buttons

The shape emoji come in two full colour sets. Circles: 🔴 🟠 🟡 🟢 🔵 🟣 🟤 ⚫ ⚪ and the hollow ⭕. Squares: 🟥 🟧 🟨 🟩 🟦 🟪 🟫 ⬛ ⬜. 🔴 🔵 ⚫ ⚪ and ⬛ ⬜ are the old ones (Unicode 5.1 and 6.0); orange, yellow, green, purple and brown arrived together in Emoji 12.0 (2019) so that every colour had both a circle and a square. ◼️ ◻️ ◾ ◽ ▪️ ▫️ are the same black and white squares in medium, medium-small and small sizes; on most keyboards they sit next to ⬛ ⬜.

The colours carry meaning by convention. 🟢 is online, available, go or correct; 🔴 is live, recording, urgent or stop; 🟡 is a warning or 'away'; 🔵 is information or a neutral tag; ⚫ ⚪ are the plain dots. 🟩 🟨 ⬛ ⬜ became famous in 2022 as the Wordle share grid, where green means a letter in the right place and yellow a letter in the word; 🟥 🟧 🟨 🟩 🟦 🟪 lined up make a rainbow bar, and any of the squares work as pixels for emoji art.

The rest of the family: 🔶 🔷 large and 🔸 🔹 small diamonds, 💠 a diamond with a dot (drawn as a blue flower-like shape on most platforms), 🔺 🔻 red triangles that stand for up and down, 🔘 a radio button, 🔲 🔳 square buttons and 🛑 the octagonal stop sign. ⏹️ and ⏺️ from the media controls are a plain square and a plain circle, so they double as shapes too. 🔹 and 🔸 are the most used of all: they are the standard emoji bullet points on LinkedIn and in Telegram channels.

Squares, circles, triangles and diamonds: which one to use

Squares ■ □ are the safest bullets and checkboxes in plain text: □ for an open task and ■ or ▣ for a done one. ▢ has rounded corners, ⬚ is dotted, ❏ ❐ ❑ ❒ carry drop shadows, and ▤ ▥ ▦ ▧ ▨ ▩ are hatched fills. Rectangles ▬ ▭ ▮ ▯ and parallelograms ▰ ▱ are the odd members of the family, and ⏢ is the only trapezium.

Circles ● ○ ◯ ⬤ do the same jobs with a softer look, and the part-filled ones ◔ ◑ ◕ ● are Harvey balls, the progress or rating scale used in consulting tables and product comparisons. ◉ ◎ ⊙ put a dot or ring inside; ◐ ◑ ◒ ◓ are half-black circles; ◌ is the dotted circle you see in font tables as a placeholder for accents.

Triangles come in every direction: ▲ ▼ ◀ ▶ filled and △ ▽ ◁ ▷ hollow, with small ▴ ▾ ◂ ▸ and pointer ► ◄ forms. ▲ ▼ mean up and down, rise and fall (▲ 12 % / ▼ 3 %), ▶ is play and ▸ is a bullet. ∆ (increment) is the triangle people type for change in maths and physics, ∇ (nabla) is its upside-down partner, ⊿ is a right triangle and ◢ ◣ ◤ ◥ are the corner triangles used in aesthetic borders.

Diamonds ◆ ◇ are squares turned 45 degrees; lozenges ◊ ⧫ are the taller, narrower kind. ◈ holds a small diamond inside, ❖ is the dingbat diamond made of four, and ⬖ ⬗ ⬘ ⬙ are half-filled. Pentagons ⬟ ⬠, hexagons ⬡ ⬢ ⬣ and octagons ⯃ ⯄ have no small or hollow variants to speak of, so what you see here is the whole set; ⏣ is a benzene ring, a hexagon with a circle inside, that chemists use and everyone else borrows as a honeycomb cell.

Shape symbols meaning in real life: signs, ratings and games

Shapes rate difficulty on North American ski runs: ● green circle for easiest, ■ blue square for intermediate, ◆ black diamond for expert and ◆◆ double black diamond for the hardest. Mountain-bike trails and some hiking maps use the same three shapes, which is why ● ■ ◆ next to a route name reads as easy, medium, hard.

In Japan ○ (maru) means correct, × (batsu) means wrong, △ means partly or so-so and ◎ (double circle) means excellent, so a table of ◎ ○ △ × is a four-step rating; the same marks appear on exam papers and on the PlayStation controller's △ ○ ✕ □ buttons. In flowcharts ◇ is a decision, ▭ a process step, ▱ input or output and ⬭ the start or end.

In maths, □ is a proof-ending tombstone (the halmos ∎ is its filled cousin), ∆ is a change in a quantity and ∠ is an angle; in dictionaries and fonts, a hollow box □ where a letter should be is 'tofu', the glyph a font shows when it lacks the character, which is where Google's Noto fonts got their name (No Tofu).

How to type shape symbols on a keyboard

Windows: hold Alt and type on the number pad 254 for ■, 9 for ○, 30 for ▲, 31 for ▼, 16 for ►, 17 for ◄ and 7 for •. These old codes work in most programs; for anything else, type the Unicode number and press Alt+X in Word (25A0 Alt+X gives ■, 25CF → ●, 25B2 → ▲, 25C6 → ◆), or use the Geometric Shapes subset in Insert → Symbol. In Excel and Google Sheets, =UNICHAR(9632) returns ■, 9679 ●, 9650 ▲ and 9670 ◆.

Mac: press Ctrl+Cmd+Space for the character viewer and search 'square', 'circle' or 'triangle'. iPhone and Android: the emoji keyboard's Symbols section has every shape emoji; for the text shapes, copy them from this page once and they stay in your clipboard history. LaTeX: \square □, \blacksquare ■, \triangle △, \bigcirc ○, \bullet ●, \diamond ⋄, \lozenge ◊ and \blacklozenge ⧫ (the last two from amssymb).