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❓

red question mark

Red Question Mark

3/7

❓ is the red question mark emoji: huh?, what?, explain that. People mostly send it alone, as a nudge when you go quiet or say something baffling. With no words around it, it can sound more impatient than a typed ?, so add a few words if you want to stay friendly.

EmojiSince 2010

Choose a version

2 versions
Text and emoji forms

What ❓ means

It's a nudge: answer me, or explain that. After your silence, you're being chased for a reply. After a strange message of yours, they want a clearer version.

Reply with real words: what you meant, or when you'll answer. Bouncing an emoji back just keeps the confusion going.

Why can a lone ❓ feel rude?

Big, red and wordless, it reads louder than ?. A typed ? asks; a solo ❓ can look like a demand, even when the sender only meant quick shorthand.

Neutral inside a sentence, blunt on its own.

A bare ❓ can read as an impatient demand, not friendly curiosity.

Part of collections

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Punctuation Symbols
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Confused Emoji
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What it means when someone sends it to you

5 readings

You're being chased — they want an answer.

Don't confuse it with

2
❔
White Question Mark
White question mark: a hollow, outlined twin with the same meaning; it looks quieter because it isn't filled red.
?
Question Mark
The ordinary keyboard question mark: same question, no extra volume — the neutral choice.

Combination ideas

4
Full disbelief: what is even happening?
Shrug plus a question: no idea, you tell me.
Sheepish confusion: I'm lost, sorry.
Puzzled and thinking it over.

Worth knowing

  • The mark it copies is old: a Latin question sign, the punctus interrogativus, appeared in church reading texts by the late eighth century, and the familiar shape was in print by 1496.
  • ❓ is older than its Unicode entry: it came from the emoji sets of Japanese phone carriers KDDI and SoftBank, which Unicode 6.0 absorbed in 2010.

Questions people ask

2

Is sending just ❓ rude?

It can be. Alone it often lands as impatient; a few words like "wait, what do you mean?" keep it friendly.

Can I use ❓ instead of typing huh?

Yes. When the confusion is obvious, ❓ works as a quick huh? or what?

Collections with ❓

18
👍Yes, No & OK Emoji63 symbols😲Surprised & Shocked Emoji74 symbols🙃Sarcastic & Sassy Emoji110 symbols💬Speech Bubble & Chat Emoji107 symbols🤔Thinking Emoji62 symbols📚School & Study Emoji101 symbols😀All Emoji1,705 symbols⌨️Terminal Symbols & Emoji277 symbols🔴Red Emoji138 symbols✅Check Mark Symbols100 symbols📌Discord Symbols237 symbols▶️YouTube Symbols249 symbols💼LinkedIn Symbols & Emoji257 symbols🧱Roblox Symbols248 symbolsツFortnite Symbols321 symbols🇧🇲Bermuda Emoji & Symbols105 symbols🇧🇻Bouvet Island Emoji45 symbols🇺🇲U.S. Outlying Islands Emoji66 symbols

How to type or find ❓

Search it as
huh · what · why · confused · ??? · question mark emoji · clarify
Type it as
:question:
Around since
2010 · Emoji 0.6
Shows up on
Every phone · iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux
Windows
⊞Win+.Open the emoji picker and search “red question mark”.
macOS
⌃Control+⌘Command+␣Spaceopens the character viewer.
iOS / Android
Emoji keyboard search “red question mark”.
Chat apps
:question:Common shortcode in Slack, GitHub, Discord, Mattermost and other chat apps; a few apps use a different name.
HTML
❓
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
❓
HTML hex
❓
CSS content
content: "\2753";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%9D%93
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

2

Typography & punctuation332 symbols

‼️❗⁉️❔❕〰️!"#%&'

Symbols224 symbols

‼️❗✅✔️❌🔴⚠️➡️⬇️⤵️▶️⁉️