What 𝑧 means
The equation assigns its role; it has no fixed value.
It can mark an unknown or any quantity its author defines.
Why is z italic in math?
Descartes's 1637 math book La Géométrie helped establish italic lowercase unknowns; it used z, y, x in reverse order.
A 1999 Unicode proposal argued that distinct styles can mark distinct quantities in plain text; the standard reserves these characters for math and technical notation.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does 𝑧 turn into plain z?
Compatibility normalization, a text-cleanup process, can map mathematical alphabets to basic letters and erase the style distinction.
More like this
11
How to type or find 𝑧
- Search it as
- italic z · math z
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
Windows
HTML
𝑧CSS
\1D467LaTeX
To type italic z in LaTeX, enter
z in math mode; it renders an italic variable, not this exact Unicode character.Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
𝑧
HTML hex
𝑧
CSS content
content: "\1D467";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%F0%9D%91%A7
1
On screen
1
Code points
2
JS .length
4
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.