What 𝑣 means
It is the Latin letter v set in mathematical italics. The style usually marks a variable—a letter standing for a quantity or object named in the formula. The character itself does not say what that quantity is; the surrounding equation defines it.
Mathematical italics preserve a formula distinction
Mathematical and scientific publishers used distinct letter styles before Unicode encoded them as separate characters. In 1999, a Unicode proposal gathered those established math alphabets so plain-text formulas could preserve which mathematical alphabet a letter belongs to.
MathML, a format for writing formulas on the web, can also apply the same mathematical-italic class to ordinary v instead of storing 𝑣 itself.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does 𝑣 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
11
How to type or find 𝑣
- Search it as
- italic · math · v · unicode · variable
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𝑣\1D463\mathit{v} to typeset v in mathematical italics; this applies the style without inserting the Unicode character 𝑣.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.