What ✰ means
Use ✰ as decoration unless the message gives it a role. Beside a name or heading, it adds visual emphasis.
A dingbat is a small printed ornament. Unicode's Dingbats block draws most designs from ITC Zapf Dingbats series 100 (Unicode Standard 12.0). The computer fonts Zapf Dingbats and Wingdings date to 1978 and 1990–1992.
A font-rendered text symbol, not an emoji; it feels decorative, literary, or retro.
A lone ✰ does not tell you what is being praised.
Don't confuse it with
3Questions people ask
1Why does ✰ 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.
How to type ✰
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2730, then Alt+X to get ✰.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “shadowed white star”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2730, then Enter or Space.
HTML
✰CSS
\2730Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
✰
HTML hex
✰
CSS content
content: "\2730";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%9C%B0
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.